"Well," she said shortly, "I suppose Miss Gray can decline him if she
doesn't want to marry him."

"But she DOES want to marry him!" cried Rosamund in exasperation.
"She's a wild, wicked fool, and I won't be parted from her."

"Perhaps," said Diana icily, "but I really don't see what we can do."

"But the man's balmy, Diana," reasoned her friend angrily.
"I can't let my nice governess marry a man that's balmy!
You or somebody MUST stop it!--Mr. Inglewood, you're a man;
go and tell them they simply can't."

"Unfortunately, it seems to me they simply can," said Inglewood,
with a depressed air. "I have far less right of intervention
than Miss Duke, besides having, of course, far less moral
force than she."

"You haven't either of you got much," cried Rosamund,
the last stays of her formidable temper giving way;
"I think I'll go somewhere else for a little sense and pluck.
I think I know some one who will help me more than you do,
at any rate... he's a cantankerous beast, but he's a man,
and has a mind, and knows it..." And she flung out into the garden,
with cheeks aflame, and the parasol whirling like a Catherine wheel.

She found Michael Moon standing under the garden tree, looking over
the hedge; hunched like a bird of prey, with his large pipe hanging down
his long blue chin. The very hardness of his expression pleased her,