Now the imitation of such tactics is difficult enough; their defeat, when they are combated consciously, is literally exhausting. In two or three days Cleopatra was exhausted. Never at a loss for a pretext, never apparently thinking any excuse too jejune, too transparently fatuous, or too puerile, to draw the attention of the men, Leonetta, with unabated high spirits, won again and again, every day, every hour, such a number of these silent secret victories over the rest of the young women of the party, that at the end of a week, when their cumulative effect was so overwhelmingly manifest as no longer to allow of denial, she openly assumed the role of queen of the party. Again and again, in a game of tennis, Cleopatra's tired and overworked brain would grapple with the problem, why a certain empty remark of Leonetta's had caused Denis and Guy to double up with laughter, and had thus held up the game for a moment; and the solution was hard to find. She knew that even a brighter remark from herself would not have so much as caused them to interrupt their service; but she was imperfectly acquainted with the psychology of rulership, and did not understand that when once, by fair means or foul, a certain member of a party has by her own unaided efforts elevated herself to the position of its queen, everything ostensibly witty that proceeds from her mouth is greeted with obsequious laughter by her devoted subjects. Indeed, in order not to appear a spoilsport, Cleopatra was at last reduced to the humiliating resort of joining in the courtly merriment which appeared to her so extravagantly to result from her sister's mildest jests. To say that by this time she was feeling a slight sinking sensation in the region of her heart, would be to express with scrupulous moderation what was actually taking place. For Cleopatra, theretofore, had held her own against the best. A good rider, a splendid shot, with almost a professional form in tennis and golf, and a good swimmer and dancer besides, she possessed none of those shortcomings, so handsomely acknowledged when they are present, which would even have justified her in taking up an unassuming position. Besides she was quite rightly aware of owning certain sterling qualities which promised to afford a very much more solid support to the everyday life of this world, than the constant carnival brilliance of her sister; and she found it oppressive to have to appear perpetually in carnival spirits, when she craved for those more sober moods in which her less volatile virtues could make a good display. She was beginning to find her sister's hard, unrelenting rivalry difficult to forgive, and the steady shaping of a dreaded feeling of loathing for the cause of her partial eclipse began to cause her some alarm.