“That will be delightful,” said Eileen with a demure smile; and Rosamund laughed, too, with full-hearted laughter; for trouble sat very lightly on her perfect shoulders in the noontide of her strength and youth.  Sin and repentance were rapid matters with Rosamund; cause, effect, and remorse a quick sequence to be quickly reckoned up, checked off, and cancelled; and the next blank page turned over to be ruled and filled with the next impeachment.

There was, in her, more of mischief than of real malice; and if she did pinch people to see them wiggle it was partly because she supposed that the pain would be as momentary as the pinch; for nothing lasted with her, not even the wiggle.  So why should the pain produced by a furtive tweak interfere with the amusement she experienced in the victim’s jump?

But what had often saved her from a social lynching was her ability to laugh at her own discomfiture, and her unfeigned liking and respect for the turning worm.

* * * * *

“And, my dear,” she said, concluding the account of the adventure to Mrs. Ruthven that afternoon at Sherry’s, “I’ve never been so roundly abused and so soundly trounced in my life as I was this blessed morning by that red-headed novice!  Oh, my!  Oh, la!  I could have screamed with laughter at my own undoing.”

“It’s what you deserved,” said Alixe, intensely annoyed, although Rosamund had not told her all that she had so kindly and gratuitously denied concerning her relations with Selwyn.  “It was sheer effrontery of you, Rosamund, to put such notions into the head of a child and stir her up into taking a fictitious interest in Philip Selwyn which I know—­which is perfectly plain to m—­to anybody never existed!”

“Of course it existed!” retorted Rosamund, delighted now to worry Alixe.  “She didn’t know it; that is all.  It really was simple charity to wake her up.  It’s a good match, too, and so obviously and naturally inevitable that there’s no harm in playing prophetess. . . .  Anyway, what do we care, dear?  Unless you—­”

“Rosamund!” said Mrs. Ruthven exasperated, “will you ever acquire the elements of reticence?  I don’t know why people endure you; I don’t, indeed!  And they won’t much longer—­”

“Yes, they will, dear; that’s what society is for—­a protective association for the purpose of enduring impossible people. . . .  I wish,” she added, “that it included husbands, because in some sets it’s getting to be one dreadful case of who’s whose.  Don’t you think so?”

Alixe, externally calm but raging inwardly, sat pulling on her gloves, heartily sorry she had lunched with Rosamund.

The latter, already gloved, had risen and was coolly surveying the room.

“Tiens!” she said, “there is the youthful brother of our red-haired novice, now.  He sees us and he’s coming to inflict himself—­with another moon-faced creature.  Shall we bolt?”