It is impossible to hide one’s secrets. The whole family felt sure that Tina was thinking of Francis Fanshawe, though she never even looked out of the window when he spun past it, as sometimes happened, in his big, white motor car, filled with a gay crowd of bugle-blowing boys. Elinor, with the tacit consent of her elders, actually wrote a note inviting him to the house. He came, indeed, but Tina refused to see him, playing checkers up-stairs in the library with Robert, who had a meditative, humorous way of beating her, while Elinor, perforce, did the entertaining. The big youth was not unpleasing, as she owned afterwards, though he said next to nothing, but his blue eyes looked unusually appreciative and he gripped her hand so hard when he left that her fingers were nearly welded into each other. It was at the end of the month that Tina came into her mother’s room one morning with an unexpected rush, her golden head thrown back, the black poodle barking delightedly at her heels. There was a note in her voice which had not been there in these four weeks past, as she said: “Momsey, I’ve something to say to you.” “Well, come over here, dear. I want to hook you up; your dress is all open in the back. I wish you would be more careful. Isn’t it time for you to go to your lessons?” “I’m not going to study any more, mother.” “My dear child, what do you mean?” “I’ve decided that I want to get married,” said Tina—“to Francis.” A wave of colour rose suddenly over her lovely face, and she made an annoyed motion as if to brush it away. “Annette knows I want to marry him. I wanted her to tell you, but she said you wouldn’t like it unless I told you myself. So now I’m telling you. And I hope you won’t mind very much, for Francis and I will never care for any one else.” “Oh, my dear child!” said Mrs. Malison. Mother and daughter looked at each other with the same expression of dominant will. “This is, of course, nonsense, Tina.” She braced herself as one does against a coming blow so appalling that one cannot stop to fear the weight of it; all one’s energies must be used to fend it off. “It distresses me to hear you talk like this; you don’t mean it—you don’t know _what_ it means; but it distresses me, Tina!” “There, I knew you’d say that!” cried Tina in poignant remonstrance. She dropped into her favourite attitude of hunched up shoulders, her lips set in scornful bitterness. “Every one lectures me and scolds me—nobody wants me to do anything I like except Francis. Even Robert lectures me, though he’s such a muff with Elinor! I know none of you like Francis. I know you all despise him, but he’s a thousand times nicer to me than any one else is. He likes me to have everything I want.”