"Detesting games! I am bored to death," she said, "and so--I imagine-- are you. Don't you think we should suffer less if we escaped beyond the sounds of croquet and lawn-tennis, and everything except the clack of our own voices?" Claudia hesitated, and Helen added-- "You had better come. I assure you there are times when I can be intelligent, and Captain Fenwick will not be here just yet." The girl walked quickly on as if she had been stung. "What has that to do with it?" she said recklessly. Miss Arbuthnot was engaged in disentangling a bramble which had caught in her dress. When she looked up she said coolly-- "A good deal to me. You know--or do you not know?--that I have always liked him." Amazement struck Claudia almost speechless. She stammered with her sudden rush of anger. "You tell me--you can tell me--" "The truth. Isn't that always desirable? Besides, after all, have I said anything that should affront you? That I liked him. That was my remark." There was a pause. "It implied that he liked you," said Claudia, more calmly, though still choking. "Oh, not at all. Does the one thing invariably imply the other?" It might have been that there was--it seemed so to Claudia--a touch of mockery in the question. "If not--" she began hastily, and stopped. "If not, you think I was a fool? Well--perhaps. We were engaged, at any rate." "Oh!" cried the girl, stopping short. This was more than she had dreamed of. "You did not know it? But I imagine you are prepared to hear of such episodes?" Is any woman prepared? Claudia bit her lip to keep back the answer she would have liked to fling at her tormentor, and Miss Arbuthnot went on-- "It did not last very long. To adopt the stock phrase proper to these humiliating occasions, we discovered that we had made a mistake. Probably you wonder why I am going back to that not-too-agreeable time. I will tell you--" "Don't!" cried Claudia, quite suddenly. She hardly knew what she said, conscious only of a sharp thrill of pain, and a sickening dread of worse to come. Miss Arbuthnot glanced quickly at her, and went on as if she had not spoken. "It is because I am certain you are falling into the same mistake." She turned away as she spoke, and stood resting her arms upon a railing. Behind her she heard the girl breathing heavily. Then it seemed as if Claudia made an effort to speak, for her voice was strangely hoarse and low. "This is unendurable!" she said.