"I guess, if you don't mind, Miss Ramsden had better lie right-down for a spell. She's had some brandy, and a cup of tea would be pretty comforting, but it's rest she needs most of all. It's a pretty hard strain sitting by, and watching someone else driving straight to glory. When you've got something to do, there's not so much time to think. The spill was bound to come, so it was up to me to choose the softest place!" Mrs Greville stared, in obvious disregard of the meaning of the words. "Why, you are American! How odd! I've never met an American in Norton before, in all the years I have lived here!" "I'm not a mite surprised!" replied Cornelia, with a depth of meaning which her hearers failed to fathom. They imagined that she was humbly appreciative of her own good fortune in visiting a neighbourhood as yet preserved from the desecration of the American tourists, whereas she was mentally reviewing the sleepy shops where the assistants took a solid five minutes to procure twopence change, the broken-down flies which crawled to and from the station; the tortoise-like round of village life. "If Providence had sent over half a dozen more like me a dozen years ago, there's no saying but they might be rubbing their knuckles into their eyes by now, and beginning to wake up! I've got to butt right in, if I'm to make any mark by the end of three months!" Such were the young woman's mental reflections, while Geoffrey rang the bell and anticipated his mother's order for tea. He was anxious that Elma should lie down then and there, but she refused to do so, with a glance from the delicate cushions to her own dusty boots. Cornelia's openly expressed solicitude had had the not unnatural result of increasing her feeling of exhaustion, and the colour flamed and faded in her cheeks as she endeavoured to drink tea and take part in the conversation which ensued. Mother and son watched her continuously, the one with unconcealed anxiety, the other with a wholly impersonal admiration, as though the girl were a new article of furniture, which fitted unusually well into its niche. Her air was kindly enough, but too dispassionate to be sympathetic. Elma Ramsden hardly counted as an independent human being in the estimation of Madame Greville, but she was a lovely piece of flesh and blood, at whom it was pleasant to look. It would be a thousand pities if her beauty were marred. It was more in a spirit of a connoisseur than a friend that she made the inquiry which her son was already longing to prompt. "My dear child, you look very ill! How are we going to get you home? Your own cart is injured, you say. I think you had better have the brougham, where you can rest against the cushions. You shall have our horses, of course. They won't run away with you, though I don't say they have never done it before! I like a horse with a spirit of its own, but these two have been out to-day, so they ought to be pretty quiet."