Maud used to laugh at these speeches; and though she did not like them nor the man who made them, and understood what Felicia meant by saying that Desvoeux's fun had about it something which hurt one, it seemed quite natural to laugh at them. She observed too, before long, that they were seldom made when Felicia was by, and that Desvoeux, if in higher spirits at Mrs. Vereker's than at the Vernons' house, was also several shades less circumspect in what he said, and divulged tastes and opinions which were concealed before her cousin. More than once, as Felicia came up Desvoeux had adroitly turned the conversation from some topic which he knew she would dislike; and Maud, who was guilelessness itself, had betrayed by flushing cheeks and embarrassed manner the fact of something having been concealed. On the whole, Felicia had never found the world harder to manage or the little empire of her drawing-room less amenable to her sway. Her guests somehow would not be what she wished. Desvoeux, though behaving with marked deference to her wishes and always sedulously polite, pleased her less and less, Maud's innocence and impulsiveness, however attractive, frequently produced embarrassments which it required all Felicia's tact to overcome. Her husband, laconic and indolent, gave not the slightest help. Another ground on which she distressed herself (very unnecessarily, could she only have known) was, that Sutton, among other performers on Felicia's little stage, played not at all the brilliant part which she had mentally assigned him. The slightly contemptuous dislike for Desvoeux which Felicia had often heard him express, and in which she greatly sympathised, though veiled under a rigid courtesy, was yet incompatible with cordiality, or good cheer; and Desvoeux, whose high spirits nothing could put down, often appeared the pleasanter companion of the two. Sutton, in fact, had on more occasions than one come into collision with Desvoeux in a manner which a less easy-going and light-hearted man would have found it difficult to forgive. Once, at mess, on a Guest-night, Desvoeux had rattled out some offensive nonsense about women, and Sutton had got up and, pushing his chair back unceremoniously, had marched silently away to the billiard-room in a manner which in him, the most chivalrous of hosts, implied a more than ordinarily vehement condemnation. Afterwards Desvoeux had been given to understand that, if he came to the mess, he must not, in the Major's presence at any rate, outrage good taste and good morals by any such displays. Then, at another time, there was a pretty young woman--a sergeant's wife--to whom Desvoeux showed an inclination to be polite. Sutton had told Desvoeux that it must not be, in a quietly decisive way which he felt there was no disputing, though there was something in the other's authoritative air which was extremely galling. He could not be impertinent to Sutton, and he bore him no deep resentment; but he