Evelyn smiled. She knew in a moment her power over the girl, and she was glad to know it. Jean interested her: not only for the sake of Mr. Trevelyan, whom Evelyn had always liked. Jean herself was so uncommon: not exactly good-looking, but so very uncommon. There was a trenchant attractiveness about the aristocratic pose of Jean's head, and the straightforward earnestness of her singular eyes, combined with an abnormal simplicity of dress and manner. Evelyn's glance travelled over her, taking in all particulars: then she sat down on a sofa, making Jean do the same. "I want to know this child well," she said, with her sweet graciousness. "Yes, I suppose she is a child still—compared with me. But I have a fancy that we shall be friends some day. Will you come and see me, Jean, when I am alone, now and then?" Jean's eyes brightened into a golden glow like sunshine. "If I may," she said. "The oftener the better," quoth Mr. Trevelyan, who was under the power of Evelyn's magic wand, though not to such an extent as to lose his own individuality. "Thanks! Then come often, Jean—as often as you can be spared. I must introduce you to my little boudoir. Only think, that naughty brother of mine has not been near me since Wednesday morning." Explanations had to be given. Jean left them to her father, and Mr. Trevelyan said no more than was needful, but Evelyn drew certain particulars from him by skilful questioning. "The old story," she said. "My aunt will do her best to spoil him. After all, the only hope lies in school." "Cyril doesn't want to be a coddle," spoke up Jean in his defence. "You and he are great friends, are you not?" "I don't know. Yes; I suppose so," Jean answered slowly, as if anxious to be exact. Presently, with an abrupt change of subject—only, nothing that Evelyn did ever had an abrupt effect—Mrs. Villiers asked— "What of Dutton parties and politics?" "I am not a man of Dutton," was the answer. "The better able, perhaps, to take a dispassionate outside view." "That may be," cautiously, "but I am very busy in my own work. Not much time to watch other people." "I wish 'other people' could say the same. It seems to me that the normal occupation of Dutton generally is to sit and look at its neighbours—not with approving eyes." "A common result of too little to do." "And looking at them means talking about them. Things have always been so, I suppose; but after years away, one notices more. I have been in the thick of it all this week. Everybody does not wait, like you and Jean, for leave to call before Sunday. Perhaps I should not have given leave in some cases—" with a slight curl of her lip. "I have had any number of callers: and they all seem convinced that the one object of my coming home is to hear how badly the world has gone on in my absence. The Dutton world I mean." "So long as they keep to generalities—" and a pause. "They do not. It is all about individuals."