Sybella did not show profound knowledge here, but she would have maintained the statement through thick and thin. "I really am quite at a loss what to do. Of course one can see whose influence has been at work. Yes—come in." "Lady Lucas is downstairs, ma'am." Sybella had to smooth her ruffled plumage, and to hasten to the drawing-room, where Lady Lucas sat on the chief sofa—a large woman, plump and round, and clothed in black brocaded silk, almost stiff enough to stand on end. In youth she had been pretty, but her features had expanded with her frame into a rotund shapelessness, and the distinguishing characteristic of her countenance was its extent of cheek. There was also a superfluity of chin, though not of forehead, and her eyes were surrounded by cushions, which left only two slim crevices when she smiled. She was the very picture of dignified geniality greeting Sybella with effusive affection; and the effect of her effusiveness was to call forth the gush always latent in Sybella, albeit trampled under feet by an irresponsive world. Sybella aught sigh, and clasp her hands, and gaze with appreciative eyes, to any extent, in Lady Lucas' presence. Tea came in, and Sybella poured it out in a vague and poetical manner. She forgot the sugar, and then the cake; and she blushed and sighed over her own mistakes, pleading absorption of mind. Lady Lucas had no objection to absorbed minds in the abstract. Indeed she thought it rather interesting to see Sybella go off into a mild dream, with clasped hands, and eyes riveted on the top-point of the banner-screen; but she was too old fashioned not to like sugar. "No innovations for me, my dear!" she said magisterially, when Sybella offered the sugar-basin, and she helped herself to three big lumps. "Tea was meant to be taken with sugar. Leaving it off is all a fad of the present day." The saccharine question disposed of, they reverted to topics of local interest, and divers affairs pertaining to other people were settled by the two ladies. Sybella had not meant to say anything about the perversity of her nephew, being well aware that what was told to Lady Lucas was told to Dutton. But her mind was full of the subject, and the outlets from Sybella's mind were always badly corked. A very moderate amount of steam-pressure within would at any time get rid of the corks. So presently the whole story came out, not to say more than the whole. A story told by any one is pretty sure to take its colouring from the condition of the teller's feelings, and Sybella's feelings were not calm. Lady Lucas listened, questioned, sympathised. "There is nothing for it but firmness," she maintained, removing a crumb from her brocaded silk. "You must hold your own, my dear. It is a question of now or never. I know what young men are in the present day. If you yield now, you will never have the upper hand again." "So difficult!" sighed Sybella pensively.