Helen had been thinking hard since she had left Kit. Anger still blazed in her eyes and flamed in her cheeks, but she had decided upon her line of action. However frank she might have been in prearranging her course, now that it had failed, her candour should be curtailed. She would not admit to Miss Carrington how completely she had missed her aim. She knew perfectly well that Kit’s aunt would condemn her, not only because she retained the manners of a past generation, but because she would feel that Helen would inevitably have repelled Kit by what she had done. Helen would not admit this. If little Anne had not come along precisely when she came; if Kit had once taken her in his arms, Helen felt sure that she would have fastened herself within them for all his life. “Oh, didn’t Kit come back?” asked Helen, indifferently, when Miss Carrington said that she thought he was not returning to dinner. “He took home that thin little dark marplot. She came wandering where we were sitting. Kit left me here and went home with her. How common youngsters do go about without being looked after, and nothing happens to them! Kit probably went with this scrawny little beast for pleasure. He has strange tastes and ways!” Helen’s fury escaped her. Miss Carrington clutched the back of the chair by the door and stared at her. “What under heaven do you mean, Helen?” she gasped. “Little dark _marplot_? Anne Berkley? Good heavens, was she a marplot? Did she spoil anything?” “Only all our plans, Miss Carrington,” Helen said, turning from the mirror with a laugh that was not pleasant. “I had Kit where I wanted him; a moment more and I’d have been your niece. But it was against his will. I’d have changed his will; he was past choosing. Then that brat came singing through the trees, a fool French hymn like a shepherdess in a badly cast musical comedy, and----” Helen waved her hands to signify the dispersion of everything. Miss Carrington rallied. “But it’s not final. If he was entranced, as you imply, it is only deferred.” “Not at all,” cried Helen. “Kit had resisted my arguments in favour of our sensible marriage. He doesn’t approve in the least of Christopher Carrington and Helen Abercrombie compounding the felony of sacrilege--or some such fool notion. And now he’ll be on his guard against my attraction. Frankly, never-to-be aunt, I won’t bother any more with Kit. I don’t want him; he’s a fool, a milk-white milk-sop! I’ll marry George Lanbury soon. He has money enough to buy up the whole of Cleavedge, and when it comes to appreciating my beauty----” Helen again ended with a gesture, this time conveying boundlessness. “I hope that Kit will wait for that child to grow up, and that he will marry her and have a string of black imps as long as the rosary he’ll be forced to rattle off at Roman shrines, decked out in tinsel!” Helen bit her lip, angry that at the last moment she had fully betrayed the fury that is renowned as exceeding anything known in hell.