"Of course it would----" "So you'll come?" "Yes, I'll come--if I possibly can," said Bernadette. They all began to laugh. Bernadette joined in. "Back to where we began--just like a woman!" exclaimed Arthur. "There--that's just what I mean, Miss Sarradet. He's begun to bully!" "Well, I must. Because why shouldn't you be able to come, you see?" She looked at him, pursing up her smiling lips. "Circumstances, Cousin Arthur!" And she pushed back her chair from the table. "Oh, rot! And, I say, don't go, Bernadette!" "I must. I'm awfully sorry to. You're all so nice." "And if you possibly can, Mrs. Lisle? D.V.? That kind of thing, you know?" "Unless circumstances absolutely prevent!" she playfully promised for the last time, as she turned away, Arthur following to put her in her carriage. Joe Halliday drew a long breath. "Well now, girls, how's that for high?" "Why, her hat alone must have----" Amabel began, with every appearance of meaning to expatiate. "I wonder what she's really like!" said Marie thoughtfully. "She's really like an angel--down to the last feather!" Joe declared with an emphasis which overbore contradiction. CHAPTER XIII SETTLED _Le château qui parle et la femme qui écoute_--Bernadette Lisle had begun to be conscious of the truth contained in the proverb, and to recognise where she had made her great mistake. Though Oliver Wyse had told her that he was in love with her, she had allowed him to go on coming to the house as usual; and she had not even explicitly barred the dangerous topic. Little use if she had! To keep him on the other side of the hall-door was really the only way. But, though startled and frightened, she had not been affronted; though rejecting his suit, she had been curious and excited about it. It was a complication indeed; but it cut across a home-life which had not complications of that kind enough, in which nobody catered for her emotions; she had to look somewhere outside for that. A lover makes a woman very interesting to herself. He casts a new light on familiar things; he turns disagreeables into tragedies, routine into slavery, placid affection into neglect. He converts whims into aspirations, freaks into instincts, selfishness into the realisation of self. All this with no willing hypocrisy, not at all meaning to tell her lies. He is simply making her see herself as he sees her, to behold with him her transfiguration.