Etta stood for a moment when the door had closed behind the two men,
looking at the portière which had hidden them from sight, as if
following them in thought. Then she gave a little laugh--a queer laugh
that might have had no heart in it, or too much for the ordinary
purposes of life. She shrugged her shoulders and took up a magazine,
with which she returned to the chair placed for her before the fire by
Claude de Chauxville.

In a few minutes Maggie came into the room. She was carrying a bundle of
flannel.

"The weakest thing I ever did," she said cheerfully, "was to join Lady
Crewel's working guild. Two flannel petticoats for the young by Thursday
morning. I chose the young because the petticoats are so ludicrously
small."

"If you never do anything weaker than that," said Etta, looking into the
fire, "you will not come to much harm."

"Perhaps not; what have you been doing--something weaker?"

"Yes. I have been quarrelling with M. de Chauxville."

Maggie held up a petticoat by the selvage (which a male writer takes to
be the lower hem), and looked at her cousin through the orifice intended
for the waist of the young.

"If one could manage it without lowering one's dignity," she said, "I
think that that is the best thing one could possibly do with M. de