Mrs. Delarayne who was not uncommonly in a condition of faint languor was content, during these terrible six weeks of her life, to play the part of spectator. Silently, but with a good proportion of the available interest, she contemplated the younger members of the party, and whether she happened to be on her _chaise-longue_ overlooking her own lawn, or on the terrace of Brineweald Park, her deep concern about the performances of her juniors never abated. The fact that a good deal of this determined attention was calculated to ward off the less attractive alternative of Sir Joseph's untiring advances, was suspected least of all by the generous squire of Brineweald himself; but it was noticeable too, that she would often sit for long spells neither observing the pranks of her young people nor listening to Sir Joseph's dulcet tones, and then it was that her daughters would suspect that age was after all beginning to tell, even in the case of their valiant parent. At such times she was, of course, simply dreaming day dreams of the life she could have had if, as "he" had said, she had been twenty now; and the beatific expression that would come into her face was scarcely one of reconciliation to senility. To say that Vanessa Vollenberg and Agatha Fearwell were perfectly happy on this holiday, would be a little wide of the mark. Indeed their condition fell very much more short of perfect happiness than they could possibly have anticipated. Truth to tell, Leonetta was too indisputably mistress of the stage. The infinite resource with which she contrived always to draw the limelight in her direction, the unremitting regularity with which she turned every circumstance into a "curtain" for her own apotheosis, while it fired the proud Cleopatra to ever fresh efforts at successful competition,--efforts which were proving tremendously exhausting,--left Vanessa and Agatha in a state not unlike a suspension of hostilities. They simply waited. Of all the men, Denis Malster was certainly the only one that a girl could have been expected to make a struggle for, and since he appeared to be entirely hypnotised by Leonetta, the remaining two, one of whom, in Agatha's case, was a brother, seemed to invite only a Platonic relationship of games and sports. It is true that Guy Tyrrell felt he could have gone to any lengths with the fascinating, voluptuous Jewess; but he had the inevitable defects of his "clean-mindedness," and knew as little how to engage the interest of a thoroughly matriculated girl as to rouse enthusiasm for botany in a cat. The first walk they had taken with the three young men and Cleopatra and her sister had been typical of much that followed.