She did not talk much, but what she said was simple and direct. She seemed to be reticent about herself, not by any means from shame, but because her acts and intentions appeared too obvious to be worth rehearsing. Once or twice her laugh, low and musical, showed that she relished a joke. Lady Maria occasionally made jokes. Here was a girl who understood them. To the old gentlewoman, who never beat about bushes, but mostly walked through them, Sanchia's bluntness made immediate appeal. Her reply, for instance, to the enquiry, What had induced her to go on with the affair, was a counter-question. “What else could I do?” she had asked, with pencilled brows arched. “I thought it made no difference. I wanted to, you see. What you do is nothing compared with what you want to do.” “Then why do it, my dear?” said Lady Maria. Sanchia did not blink the answer, “Nevile wanted me. He was very unhappy.” “Well,” said the old woman, “what is he now?” This time Sanchia did not reply. Lady Maria drew her lips in until her mouth looked like a dimple in her face. “Oho! That's it, is it? He's neglected you, and now you don't care?” “I care for some things very much,” said Sanchia. “I want to please Papa, and Vicky, my sister, you know--and I think I want to put myself right with the world. But--” “But you don't care two pins about him?” Sanchia shook her head sadly. Her brows were arched to her hair. “No,” she said, “I don't care one pin.” Lady Maria was no fool. She saw exactly what was going to happen, and no reason why she should not declare it. She had formed already a high enough opinion of Sanchia--which is to say no more than that she liked her--to be sure that it would not influence her conduct. “I'll tell you what the end of this will be,” she said. “You'll have him on the floor, kissing your toes. He'll be mad to have you--and you'll marry him. Then he'll be your slave for life. And they tell me that's the happiest state a woman can live in. I have some reason for believing it. I and the judge got along admirably, though the poor man might have bored me to extinction. Oh, you'll do very well. But don't make him jealous.” Sanchia considered this. “I don't think he would be jealous,” she decided; “but we are rather premature, aren't we?” And then she related, as if they were an anecdote, the circumstances of her departure from Wanless. Lady Maria listened carefully, nodding a dispassionate head at details which would have raised Philippa's hair, and depilated Mrs. Percival. “I think he's a human being, if you'll allow me to say so,” was the conclusion she came to. “It was no affair of the gardener's that I can see; and to be battered in your own drive by your own servant, even you must allow to be provoking.” “Oh,” Sanchia assured her, “I didn't at all mind his being vexed. But he accused me of--all sorts of things.”