The "honest Injun" brought a smile to Nora’s eyes. Like everything else that she said or did, Mrs. Ingestre stamped the schoolboy phrase with an exotic, indefinable charm that was all her own. Yet beneath the half-gay appeal there lay a note of command, and Nora drew nearer awkwardly and hesitatingly, bereft for the moment of her youthful assurance and thrust back to the school days which at the age of nineteen are not so far away. She took the white outstretched hand and stood with bent head, frowning at the carpet. Suddenly she knelt down and buried her face in her mother’s lap. "I feel like a trapped rabbit," she murmured indistinctly. A very faint smile touched Mrs. Ingestre’s lips. "A trapped rabbit, Nora? And who has trapped you, pray?" "You have, and you know it. You always do!" "Really, dear, it would have to be a very old and shortsighted rabbit to allow me to trap it, and you are neither. You must explain." Nora lifted her face. She was laughing, but she was also very near crying. "I mean—that is how you make me feel," she said. "I can defy other people when they want to do any soul-exploring on my territory. I just shut my mouth and my heart, and leave them out in the cold. But you are different. You mesmerise me till I not only have to tell you what I am feeling, but I positively _want_ to—even though it is the most disgraceful, most disreputable feeling possible." "And just now——?" "It was a thought." "What sort of a thought?" "A dreadful one." "Couldn’t you tell me?" "Of course I can—I must—but——" "Well?" "Do you want to know exactly?" "Word for word." "I was thinking what a duffer father is—was, I mean." A complete silence. Mrs. Ingestre stroked her daughter’s hand and stared sightlessly into the deepening shadows. The smile had died from her lips. "Go on," she said at last. "I don’t think there is anything else. I always think that when father talks about Providence and—and that sort of thing. I feel sometimes that if Providence took human shape and was in the room at the time I should wink—I am not sure I don’t wink inside me, anyhow." She waited, and then, as Mrs. Ingestre said nothing, she went on disconsolately: "I know I am awful, darling. I wonder if other people have shocking ideas too, or whether I am the wicked exception?" "I don’t think so," Mrs. Ingestre said. "One can’t help one’s thoughts, you know." "No, one can’t; can one? The more one sits on them, the more uproarious they get. Are you cross?" "No." "Do you—ever have thoughts like that?" "Nora, I am not feeling in the least like a trapped rabbit, if that’s what you mean." Nora laughed outright. Her youth and buoyant spirits won the upper hand for the moment, but for no longer. The actual subject of their conversation interposed itself between her humour and herself.