Good gracious! It was blackguardly and monstrous! Kitty of all women! To have "predestined spinster" written large all over you was bad enough, without being played upon thus and then cast back into spinsterhood after all! And this new softness of Kitty's, this timid opening of the heart, this new, awkward unselfishness, these pathetic little maxims of conduct! The man must be a cur. Deliberately to waken a heart that was sealed, asleep and not unhappy, and then to leave it to a pain it must keep for ever--good gracious! Still ignorant of the tell-tale red in her own cheeks, she found Mr. Jeffries vile. But she must be just to Mr. Jeffries. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps there was--nay, there must be--something she didn't know. Why, even if Mr. Jeffries could be so cruel, Kitty herself could hardly be so blind. Struggle with new magnanimities as she would, jealousy was native to Kitty, and jealousy has sharp eyes. No, she, Louie herself, was building a fantastic fabric. It was mere common-sense that Kitty must be supposed to be capable of looking after herself. But it was one thing to tell herself that she must suspend her judgment and another to do it. That theory of hers seemed to unroll itself brightly and convincingly before her again. She would discard it when she found one that better explained the known facts. Mr. Jeffries was with Evie Soames at that moment. Louie's thoughts flew to Evie Soames. It was then that she became conscious that her cheeks were hot. It was then also that she told herself angrily that they were not, and found them grow hotter still. The hotter they grew the more she denied their heat. Why should they grow hot? And even granting that they were hot, wasn't this imposture that was being practised on Kitty enough to make anybody's cheek hot? That was it. That discovery made, she admitted the heat--for Kitty's sake. That that great, taciturn, clever man should be infatuated by that pretty fool she resented--for Kitty's sake. That his sleek head, bright as the coat of Buck's horse, should stoop over that empty dark one she found ironically unfit--for Kitty's sake. She told herself all this, forgetting that she had just set Kitty's engagement down also as an absurdity. Her indignation would have been neither more nor less honest had Mr. Jeffries engaged himself (as according to her theory he might quite well have done) to Miriam Levey. Or to herself. She lay, the colour coming and going. At last she roused herself and sat up. "Pretty thoughts for an expectant mother!" she muttered. "I'll go downstairs and talk to Dot." She dressed, and descended to the nurses' sitting-room in the basement. Miss Dot and her Registrar were there; they had just come in from a walk. They were telling of a nightingale they had heard sing near Queens Mere. "Oh, and we saw your friend again, the one who came to tea," said Miss Dot, turning to Louie. Louie pricked up her ears. "Oh? Alone?" she said quickly.