CHAPTER III


During the weeks that followed the Meadowses' first visit to Crosby
Ledgers, Doris's conscience was by no means asleep on the subject of
Lady Dunstable. She felt that her behaviour in that lady's house, and
the sudden growth in her own mind of a quite unmanageable dislike, were
not to be defended in one who prided herself on a general temper of
coolness and common sense, who despised the rancour and whims of other
women, hated scenes, and had always held jealousy to be the smallest and
most degrading of passions. Why not laugh at what was odious, show
oneself superior to personal slights, and enjoy what could be enjoyed?
And above all, why grudge Arthur a woman friend?

None of these arguments, however, availed at all to reconcile Doris to
the new intimacy growing under her eyes. The Dunstables came to town,
and invitations followed. Mr. and Mrs. Meadows were asked to a large
dinner-party, and Doris held her peace and went. She found herself at
the end of a long table with an inarticulate schoolboy of seventeen, a
ward of Lord Dunstable's, on her left, and with an elderly colonel on
her right, who, after a little cool examination of her through an
eyeglass, decided to devote himself to the _débutante_ on his other
side, a Lady Rosamond, who was ready to chatter hunting and horses to
him through the whole of dinner. The girl was not pretty, but she was
fresh and gay, and Doris, tired with "much serving," envied her spirits,
her evident assumption that the world only existed for her to
laugh and ride in, her childish unspoken claim to the best of