Gladys thanked him warmly for his energetic defence of her, but denied having the least wish to witness her enemy’s retreat. “It must be getting near lunch time,” she said. “If you don’t mind waiting a moment, I’ll change my dress.” And she tripped off behind the screens. CHAPTER XII AUBER LAKE The presence of Ralph Dangelis in Nevilton House had altered, in more than one respect, the relations between Gladys and her cousin. The girls saw much less of each other, and Lacrima was left comparatively at liberty to follow her own devices. On several occasions, however, when they were all three together, it chanced that the American had made himself extremely agreeable to the younger girl, even going so far as to take her part, quite energetically, in certain lively discussions. These occasions were not forgotten by Gladys, and she hated the Italian with a hatred more deep-rooted than ever. As soon as her first interest in the American’s society began to pall a little, she cast about in her mind for some further way of causing discomfort and agitation to the object of her hatred. Only those who have taken the trouble to watch carefully what might be called the “magnetic antagonism,” between feminine animals condemned to live in close relations with one another, will understand the full intensity of what this young person felt. It was not necessarily a sign of any abnormal morbidity in our fair-haired friend. For a man in whom one is interested, even though such interest be mild and casual, to show a definite tendency to take sides against one, on behalf of one’s friend, is a sufficient justification,--at least so nature seems to indicate--for the awakening in one’s heart of an intense desire for revenge. Such desire is often aroused in the most well-constituted temperaments among us, and in this case it might be said that the sound physical nerves of the daughter of the Romers craved the satisfaction of such an impulse with the same stolid persistence as her flesh and blood craved for air and sun. But how to achieve it? What new and elaborate humiliation to devise for this irritating partner of her days? The bathing episode was beginning to lose its piquancy. Custom, with its kindly obliviousness, had already considerably modified Lacrima’s fears, and there had ceased to be for Gladys any further pleasure in displaying her aquarian agility before a companion so occupied with the beauty of lawn and garden at that magical hour. Fate, however, partial, as it often is, to such patient tenacity of emotion, let fall at last, at her very feet, the opportunity she craved.