"Oh?" Clare sat up. "Oh? Your aunt said that, did she?" She spoke with detachment, but inwardly she was alert, on guard. Elsbeth had suddenly become worth attention. "Oh, yes." Alwynne's voice was rueful. "She was quite sure of it. She said I might ask you, with pleasure, if I didn't believe her--you see, she'd love you to come--but she didn't think you would." "I wonder," said Clare, laughing naturally, "what made her say that?" "She said she knew you better than I did," confided Alwynne, with one of her spurts of indignation. "As if----" "Yes, it's rather unlikely, isn't it?" said Clare, with an intimate smile. "But you're not going?" "I must. Look at the time! Elsbeth will be having fits!" Alwynne called from the hall where she was hastily slipping on her coat and hat. Clare stood a moment--thinking. So the duel had been with Elsbeth! So that negligible and mouse-like woman had been aware--all along ... had prepared, with a thoroughness worthy of Clare herself, for the inevitable encounter ... had worsted Clare completely.... It was amazing.... Clare was compelled to admiration. It was clear to her now that Elsbeth must have distrusted her from the beginning. It had been Elsbeth's doing, not hers, that their intercourse had been so slight.... Yet she had never restrained Alwynne; she had risked giving her her head.... She was subtle! This affair of the Christmas dinner for instance--Clare appreciated its cleverness. Elsbeth had not wanted her, Clare now saw clearly; had been anxious to avoid the intimacy that such an invitation would imply; equally anxious, surely, that Alwynne should not guess her uneasy jealousy: so she had risked the invitation, counting on her knowledge of Clare's character (Clare stamped with vexation--that the woman should have such a memory!) secure that Clare, unsuspicious of her motives, would, by refusing, do exactly as Elsbeth wished. It had been the neatest of gossamer traps--and Clare had walked straight into it.... She was furious. If Alwynne, maddeningly unsuspicious Alwynne, had but enlightened her earlier in the evening! Now she was caught, committed by her own decision of manner to the course of action she most would have wished to avoid.... She could not change her mind now without appearing foolishly vacillating.... It would not do.... She had been bluffed, successfully, gorgeously bluffed.... And Elsbeth was sitting at home enjoying the situation ... too sure of herself and Clare even to be curious as to the outcome of it all. She knew. Clare stamped again. Oh, but she would pay Elsbeth for this.... The _casus belli_ was infinitely trivial, but the campaign should be Homeric.... And this preliminary engagement could not affect the final issues.... She always won in the end.... But, after all, Elsbeth could not be blamed, though she must be crushed; Alwynne was worth fighting for! Elsbeth was a fool.... If she had treated Clare decently, Clare might--possibly--have shared Alwynne with her....