She laid no blame upon her mother,--that excellent little woman whose God-sent optimism made her believe that all her children were without flaw and that the world was full of people with good hearts and good intentions. She blamed only herself, and saw plainly enough that she had allowed her head to be turned by her father's sudden acquisition of wealth which made it unnecessary for her to be anything more than a sort of butterfly skimming lightly through life without any duties to perform--without any work to occupy her attention--without any hobbies to fill her mind and give her ambition. She felt like some one who had just escaped from being run over in the streets, or who, by some divine accident, had been turned back from the very edge of an abyss. It was indeed a night that she could never forget in all her life. She lay in bed in the dark room with her eyes wide open, hearing all the hours strike one by one, watching herself with a sort of terror and amazement passing through Oxford. All the incidents that had been crowded into that short and what had appeared to be glorious week, came up in front of her again, especially the incident in the back-water with Kenyon and the night of the ball at Wadham College. These were followed in her mind by the scene in the library in her father's house, and finally that dangerous hour in Kenyon's rooms when, but for the intervention of that man who seemed of so little account, she might have been placed among those unfortunate girls of whom the world talks very harshly and who pay a terrible price for their foolishness and ignorance. And when finally she got up, tired-eyed but saner than she had been since those good, strenuous days of hers at her college when she had intended to make art her mission in life, she told herself with a characteristic touch of humour that the reformed criminal was a very good hand at preaching, and made up her mind to go along to Ethel and improve the occasion. It was very obvious to her that if she did not do this nobody would, and she was eager to give a sort of proof of the fact that she was grateful for her own escape by giving her young sister the benefit of her suffering. And so she put on her dressing-gown and went to her sister's room--the little sister of whom she was so fond and proud. Ethel was sitting at her dressing-table doing her hair. There was a petulant and discontented expression on her face. Still shamming illness, she had not yet recovered from the smart of what she called Jack's impertinence. There was a surprise in store for her,--she who believed that she had managed so successfully to play the ostrich. "Why, Belle!" she said. "What's the matter? You look as though you had been in a railway accident."