Minutes, hours, years glided by.

What a tiresome world it was!

Presently Cicely sighed. Tiddy exclaimed maliciously:

“The sleeping Beauty wakes after a trance of one hundred years.”

“Yes, I am awake,” replied Cicely tranquilly.

The girls eyed each other. Tiddy had to admit that Cicely was awake—wide awake. Something sparkled in her eyes which Tiddy recognised with astonishment as determination—something, too, not absolutely unfamiliar. Ah, she had it. Cicely was looking at her with exactly the same expression that informed the portrait of her father—a portrait acclaimed by Lady Selina as a “speaking” likeness. A banal phrase now invested with new significance. Arthur Wilverley, describing the late Henry Chandos to Miss Tiddle, had said: “I never saw the old boy funk an ugly fence if his hounds were on the other side of it.”

“I shall break off this engagement,” said Cicely.

“Cis!”

“Nothing else is possible.”

“Well, I must say you are wonderful—wonderful!”

“I must be—decent. I loathe indecency. I suppose I looked—peeped—at this marriage through drawn blinds. You have pulled them up. And I’m much obliged to you.”

“You—you forgive me, Cis? I know that I rampaged like—like a factory girl.”

“You did, thank God!”

Solemnly they kissed. Once more Miss Tiddle, not Cicely, wiped away two trickling tears. Cicely, as tranquilly as before, said:

“Nothing remains but to think out, if we can, the easiest way of breaking this to mother and—and Arthur.”

Tiddy noticed that Cicely put her mother first.

“There will be appalling ructions.”

“There won’t be ructions. I could buck up against ructions. Mother never rages when she feels things deeply. She glumps, as you accuse me of doing. She will look at me in stony silence. She will become more forlorn than ever. I’ve been a wicked fool. What time is it?”

“Half-past four.”

“We must make this tea pleasant.” Tiddy nodded, too overcome for speech. “To-night—she always comes to me at night since my engagement—I shall tell her.”

“What?”

“Ah! What? If you can suggest anything?”

Tiddy sat down, placed her head between her hands, and stared in her turn at the pattern on the carpet, which happened to be pale roses upon a pale grey ground. Lady Selina had chosen it. Cicely walked to the open window, astoundingly self-possessed.

After a minute’s concentrated thought Tiddy said quickly.

“You can’t tell her about Mr. Grimshaw?”

“Heavens, no! Do you think I’m breaking from Arthur with the deliberate intention of—of engaging myself to somebody else?”

“Aren’t you? You do care for him; he must care for you. And there you are!”

Chandos silence. Tiddy continued:

“I understand that it would be tactless to mention Mr. Grimshaw to Lady Selina, although that—your feeling for him, I mean—justifies you, forces you, to break this engagement. I believe I should tell my mother. However, I am I and you are you. If I wanted a man, and he chose to behave like a dumbwaiter loaded with rare and refreshing fruit, I—well, I should help myself.”

“I believe you would.”

“I’m glad I don’t wear your shoes, because I take a smaller size, but I try to stand in them. You can tell your mother the plain facts: you accepted a good fellow, not loving him. You find yourself unable to love him. As a gentlewoman—ring that bell—you retire as gracefully as possible and you invite her to help you.”

“Yes,” assented Cicely.

Further talk advanced them but little on the only way.