Renata continued to pick violets, and Max to decapitate those he could find. The dachshund and kitten continued to watch with absorbing interest, and Nevil continued to smoke and to let Charlotte investigate his cigarette case till her mother turned round and saw her. "You dreadful child!" she cried, "Nevil, just look. Charlotte is sucking the ends of your horrid cigarettes! How can you let her?" Charlotte was rescued from the cigarettes, or the cigarettes from Charlotte, with considerable difficulty and at the cost of many tears. Indeed her protestations were so loud that nurse appeared and bore her and Max away and silence again reigned in the warm garden between the sunny borders. The dachshund gave a sigh and flopped down on the path, and the kitten began a toilet for want of better employment. Renata, who had stood aside during the small domestic storm, gazed at her violets gravely as if she were counting them. Nevil watched her contentedly and did not observe the trouble in her face. "Nevil," she said at last, "about Charlotte I wonder--do you think----" she stopped and edged a little nearer her husband and slipped her hand in his. "Well, dear?" "You don't think, do you, Nevil, that Charlotte is--is getting like Patricia?" He put his arm round her and drew her down on the seat. "You dear silly child, no," he said, kissing her. She seemed only half assured and leant her head against him, sighing. "It is quite, quite different," he insisted. "Charlotte's temper is just like anyone else's, yours or mine, or anyone's." "Yours--you haven't got one," she returned with pretended contempt and then lapsed back into her troubled mien, "but I feel so frightened sometimes." "My dear, be reasonable. Patricia's temper isn't a temper at all. It's--it's a possession--a wretched family inheritance. She can't help it, poor child, any more than she could help a squint or a crooked nose, and she doesn't inherit it from _your_ mother but only from your step-father, so why on earth you should imagine it likely to crop up in our family I can't conceive. It's absurd." He tilted her pretty face up to his again and kissed her. Nevil would like to have killed all his wife's cares with a caress. It is not always a successful method, but it is more efficacious than the world believes. "Of course I know all that, though Patricia always seems quite like my own sister. I do hope Christopher won't tease her." "Aymer will see to that." "Not unless he is reminded. You know he rather loves teasing the poor darling himself." "Here is the poor darling, herself. Storm over, I suppose, sky serene."