Isobel’s engagement cut her further and further away from enjoying anything very much. She had always the feeling of cold critical eyes being on her. She often congratulated herself on having got over the stage where she used long words in quite their wrong sense. Isobel’s proximity in these days would have been dreadful. Miss Grace also seemed downhearted. It had been a trying winter for her, yet no actual evidence of ill-health had asserted itself. She was concerned about Elma too, who seemed to be losing what the others were gaining by being away, that just development which comes from happy experience. Elma plodded and played, but her bright little soul only came out unfledged of fear at Miss Grace’s. At last one day Miss Grace’s face lit. "My dear, your gift is composition." Nobody ever had thought of it before. Elma’s expression lightened to a transforming radiance. "Oh, I wonder if I ever could get lessons," she cried. They discovered a chance, through correspondence. So Elma held the fort, and tried to grapple single-handed with musical composition. "If only I could compose an anthem before Mabel and Jean get home," she said one day. "Heavens, Elma, you aren’t going to die?" asked Betty. CHAPTER XXIII Holding the Fort Miss Meredith took the news of her brother’s engagement in a dumb manner. An explosion of wrath would have helped every one. Robin might have appeared aggrieved, and had something of which to complain, and Isobel’s immobility beside some one in a rage was always effective. Miss Meredith would not rage however. She had met a match for her own resourceful methods, and at bottom she feared the reserve of power which prompted Isobel. Under cover of a fine frown she accepted the situation as Isobel had said she would. What hopes were overthrown by the engagement, what schemes upturned, no one but Miss Meredith herself would ever have an inkling. She began to regret her manner of ejecting Mabel, especially since the London reports told of a Mabel many cuts above Ridgetown. Miss Dudgeon had opened their eyes. She had come back in armour, the old Ridgetown armour, and talked in the stiffest manner of Mabel and Lady Emily, as though all were of a piece. Miss Meredith ventured to say to her later on that she understood that Mabel was quite a success in "Society." "She always was, wasn’t she?" asked Adelaide Maud very simply, as though she imagined society had really existed in Ridgetown. Miss Meredith was a trifle overcast. "Oh yes, yes, of course," she said. "But Mabel, of course, Mabel----" "Mabel would shine anywhere you mean. That is true. She possesses the gift of being always divinely natural." Adelaide Maud could play up better than any one. Miss Dudgeon ran on to congratulate Miss Meredith on her brother’s engagement.