"Nothing, darling!" she said--"nothing! Here we are at home! Aren't you longing for a nice, cool room and a cup of tea?" CHAPTER XIV The fragmentary quarrel between the sisters was very suggestive. Nance's anger, and Clodagh's irritable repudiation of her advice, had each been fraught with its own significance. For, much as the former might busy herself in the happiness of her own engagement and the preparations for her marriage, she could not blind herself to the fact that Clodagh was acting, if not with genuine folly, at least with something that might readily be mistaken for it; and much as the latter might resent a criticism of her action, she could not mentally deny that possibly the criticism was justified. Yet, when the matter came to be sifted, it was hard to say exactly the point to which exception could reasonably be taken. Undoubtedly Deerehurst did obtrude himself with curious--with almost intimate--frequency into the plans of each day; but then the intrusion was so natural--so simple--so subtle, if one might use so extreme a word. If London is large in one sense, it is socially as small as any other capital; and the man who wishes to seek the society of a member of his own set finds his way rendered very easy. And in all matters of tact and subtlety Deerehurst was an adept. If, in Nance's eyes, his comings and goings were things to cavil at, he knew exactly how to arrange them for Clodagh's consideration, so that the gift of a bunch of flowers--the offer of seats at a theatre--the loan of a horse--or the retailing of an amusing bit of gossip seemed the merest courtesies from one friend to another. For in one fact lay his advantage--the fact of a really great favour, secretly given and secretly accepted, in comparison with which all trivial civilities became as nothing. Not that he ever pressed this advantage home. He was far too wise to allude to it by look or word. But the very passivity of his attitude served to fix the consciousness of his generosity deeper in Clodagh's mind. Not that the knowledge of it galled her; she was too exultantly happy in her own life to be hampered by any debt. But the knowledge of its existence was there--unconsciously bearing upon her ideas and her actions. On the morning following her return from Tufinell, a faint thrill of surprise and uneasiness had touched her when her eyes had fallen upon a big square envelope, bearing a black coronet, that lay amongst her letters on the breakfast table. And another remembrance of Venice had caused her fingers to tremble slightly as she tore the letter open. But at the first line her face had cleared--her confidence in life and in herself had flowed back in full tide. There was not a word in the letter that Gore himself might not have read.