Felicia came home from the ball in far less high spirits than her _protégée_. Things had not gone as she wished, nor had Maud behaved at all in the manner which Felicia had pictured to herself as natural and appropriate to a young lady making her _début_ in polite society. Instead of displaying an interesting timidity and clinging to her chaperon for guidance and protection, Maud had taken wing boldly at once, as in a congenial atmosphere, had been far too excited to be in the least degree shy and had lent herself with indiscreet facility to a very pronounced flirtation. Felicia began to realise how hard it is to make the people about one be what one wants them to be, and how full of disappointment is the task of managing mankind, even though the fraction operated upon be no larger than a wayward school-girl's heart. Maud, whose rapidly-increasing devotion to Sutton had for days past been a theme of secret congratulation in Felicia's thoughts, had been behaving all the evening just in the way which Sutton would, she knew, most dislike, and showing the most transparent liking for the person of whom, of all others, he especially disapproved. Sutton, too, Felicia considered, was not comporting himself at all as she would have had him: he lavished every possible kindness on Maud, but then it was less for Maud's sake than her own; he would have done, she felt an annoying conviction, exactly the same for either of her little girls; and though he agreed with her in thinking Maud decidedly picturesque, and in being amused and interested in the fresh, eager, childlike impulsiveness of her character, his thoughts about her, alas! appeared to go no further. 'Why that profound sigh, Felicia?' her husband asked, when Maud had gone away to bed, leaving the two together for the first time during the evening. 'Does it mean that some one has been boring you or what?' 'It means,' said Felicia, 'that I am very cross and that Mr. Desvoeux is a very odious person.' 'And Maud a very silly one, _n'est-ce pas_? Did not I tell you what a deal of trouble our good-nature in having her out would be sure to give us? Never let us do a good-natured act again! I tell you Maud is already a finished coquette and, I believe, would be quite prepared to flirt with me.' 'I am sure I wish she would,' said Felicia in a despairing tone. 'Do you know, George, I do not like these balls at all?' 'Come, come, Felicia, how many valses did you dance to-night?' her husband asked incredulously, for Felicia was an enthusiastic Terpsichorean. 'That has nothing to do with it,' she said. 'All the people should be nice, and so many people are not nice at all. It is too close quarters. There are some men whose very politeness one resents.' 'Courtesy with a touch of traitor in it,' said her husband, 'for instance?'