Adelaide shook her head.

"Not to-night," she answered.

"You are angry with me," the girl went on. "But if you will come, I will
explain. I have something to tell you, Mama."

Mrs. Farron's heart stood still. The phrase could mean only one thing.
She went up-stairs with her daughter, sent the maid away, and herself
began to undo the soft, pink silk.

"It needs an extra hook," she murmured. "I told her it did."

Mathilde craned her neck over her shoulder, as if she had ever been able
to see the middle of her back.

"But it doesn't show, does it?" she asked.

"It perfectly well might."

Mathilde stepped out of her dress, and flung it over a chair. In her
short petticoat, with her ankles showing and her arms bare, she looked
like a very young girl, and when she put up her hands and took the pins
out of her hair, so that it fell over her shoulders, she might have
been a child.

The silence began to grow awkward. Mathilde put on her dressing-gown; it
was perfectly straight, and made her look like a little white column. A
glass of milk and some biscuits were waiting for her. She pushed a chair