Nothing beneath that fierce August sun escaped the keen comprehending eye of Vanessa Vollenberg. The mother and the two daughters with whom she found her present lot cast, gave her food enough for meditation and secret comment; but while their acumen and penetration were hardly inferior to her own, she felt an adult among people not completely grown up. It was as if they still retained more of the ingenuousness of primitive womanhood than she, and thus she "circumnavigated" them, while they, all too self-centred, had barely discovered in which hemisphere her shores were to be found. In this way the seniority of her race was probably revealed. Beautiful in her own Oriental style, voluptuous and graceful, with small well-made hands, and shapely limbs, she might have proved a formidable rival to Leonetta; or was it perhaps precisely her Jewish blood,--which seemed in Leonetta's eyes to preclude rivalry,--that had first endeared this attractive young Jewess to her wilful Gentile friend? Girls have strange reasons for "falling in love" with each other at school. It is not impossible that the inconceivability of eventual rivalry should be one of these. Mrs. Delarayne's house, "The Fastness," was one of a round dozen large houses that stood along the crest of Brineweald Hill, overlooking the little seaside town of Stonechurch. It took a little over fifteen minutes to walk down from Brineweald to the beach at Stonechurch, and perhaps a little over twenty minutes to walk back up the steep hill. Sir Joseph's place, Brineweald Park, lay inland on the far side of the village of Brineweald, about a mile from "The Fastness," but the distance was soon covered by the young people, even when they could not dispose of one of Sir Joseph's cars; and the two households were therefore practically always mingled. Bathing, tennis, golf, picnicking, croquet,--these helped to fill the time while the sun was high; and when the cool of the evening came, the quiet paths and groves of Brineweald Park, or the bowers of Mrs. Delarayne's garden, were an agreeable refuge for bodies pleasantly fatigued and faintly langorous.