should have liked to strike her hard, first on one cheek and then the
other, deepening the rose to crimson, and leaving an ugly red mark for
each finger.

"Have you a headache, dear?" she asked, in that velvet voice she keeps
for me--as if I were a thing only fit for pity and protection.

"It's my heart," said I. "It feels like a clock running down. Oh, I wish
I could die, and end it all! What's the good of me--to myself or
anyone?"

"Don't talk like that, my poor one," she said. "Shall I take you
upstairs to your own room?"

"No, I think I should faint if I had to go upstairs," I answered. "Yet I
can't stay here. What shall I do?"

"What about Uncle Eric's study?" Di asked. She always calls Lord
Mountstuart 'Uncle Eric,' though he isn't her uncle. Her mother and his
wife were sisters, that's all: and then there was the other sister who
married the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, a cousin of Lord
Mountstuart's. That family seemed to have a craze for American girls;
but Lord Mountstuart makes an exception of me. He's civil, of course,
because he's an abject slave of Di's, and she refused to come and pay a
visit in England without me: but I give him the shivers, I know very
well: and I take an impish joy in making him jump.

"I'm sure he won't be there this evening," Di went on, when I hesitated.
"He's playing bridge with a lot of dear old boys in the library, or was,
half an hour ago. Come, let me help you there. It's only a step."