have kept silence if she had been allowed. Beyond an added touch of dignity, there was no change in her manner towards her younger sister, but, strange to say, the culprit was by no means satisfied to escape so easily. Maud suffered from an insatiable desire to be observed, and--so to speak--live in the public eye. If she could be observed with admiration, so much the better, but given a choice between being disgraced or ignored, she would not have hesitated for the fraction of a moment. Better a hundred times to be scolded and denounced than to be passed by in silence as if one were a stick or a stone. So it happened that when Rowena treated her with stately indifference, Maud found it impossible to keep silent. "You might as well say it out!" she declared, wriggling about in her seat, and pouting her lips with an air of offence. "I hate people who bottle things up when all the time you see them fizzling inside. I suppose you're furious with me about what I said." Rowena drooped her eyelids, and smiled a smile of haughty detachment. "It is a matter of perfect indifference to me _what_ you say." "It was quite true!" "Perfectly true. I should be the last person in the world to accuse you of imagination." "You _were_ furious. You went white with rage, and he saw it as well as me. Now, I suppose you'll tell mother, and stop me going to the chase." "I should not dream of interfering with your plans. It is a matter of perfect indifference to me whether you go or stay." "But,"--Maud's eyes positively bulged with excitement--"I might say something else. You never know." "Possibly you might. What then? Do you really imagine, my dear Maud, that anyone notices what _you_ say!" Maud wriggled and spluttered, trying in vain to think of something scathing to say in return. Compared with this lofty indifference the most violent denunciations would have been enjoyable. "Nobody noticed what she said!" Rowena could not have launched an arrow which would have rankled more bitterly. For the remaining hours of that day Maud crept about with a melancholy hang-dog expression, taking little or no part in the general conversation.