"Yes, my mother is still living, but--she never understood me," said Miss Forsyth, vaguely. And Mrs Wentworth, suspecting some painful family history behind the words, forbore to question further. She would have been not a little amazed had she heard the true side of the story. A father and mother, simple-minded and devoted to their daughter, erring only in their too great unselfishness, to be repaid by contempt and scorn, when, by dint of a certain unscrupulous cleverness, Mabella made her way into a higher social sphere. She and Trixie had met accidentally, and the elder girl at once laid herself out to obtain an ascendency over the spoilt Helmont "baby," in which she succeeded only too well. "No," Mabella repeated. "I was never understood, and--I was not naturally patient and docile, I fear; and now, though I see it all, I am too old to change, I suppose." "Too old!" repeated Imogen's mother. "Nonsense, dear Miss Forsyth. You can't be more than seven or eight and twenty?" "I am three-and-twenty," said the girl, which was true. She was furious, but she hid it. "Will you take me in hand, dear Mrs Wentworth," she went on, "if you don't think me too old! You can't be many years older yourself," she added, sweetly. "I shall be thirty-eight next month," Imogen's mother replied. "That is dreadfully old, is it not?" "I shall count you my elder sister then, and you must tell me when you see me doing anything you don't like, and dear Imogen will look after Trixie. Shall that be a compact? Who knows how much good you may not do me in a fortnight! Even Major Winchester himself would not give me up as incorrigible, if he heard of it." And under Mabella's direction, hints, though less broad, were not wanting on Trixie's part to Imogen herself. They were seed for which circumstances, including her own inexperience and vanity, her mother's blind devotion and Rex Winchester's well-intended kindness, were steadily preparing a congenial soil. Everybody knows the atmosphere of excitement, general fuss, anxiety, and eager anticipation which seizes upon a house--a country-house especially--where "private theatricals" are in question. And to those fortunate people who have never themselves had personal experience of it, it has been too often described to need more than an allusion. It is a grand test--almost as good as a sea voyage--of temper and unselfishness. So far, perhaps, we may consider it salutary. But no doubt such a state of things has its undesirable side. To the inexperienced, especially, it brings with it a curious sense of unreality, a throwing off of one's actual self and responsibilities which call for peculiar good-sense and self-control.