grief, sympathetically opened his throat and bellowed lustily, thereby
shedding tears for positively the last time in his life.

When he returned for the holidays a few months later, he was an
excellent example of that precocity, the English schoolboy, who cloaks
a juvenile mind with the pose of sophistication, and by twelve years of
age achieves a code of thought and conduct that usually lasts him for
the rest of his life. In vain the mother strove for her place in the
sun; the rule of the masculine at Roselawn became adamant.

Life in the Durwent _ménage_ developed into a thing of laws and customs
dictated by the youthful despot, aided and abetted by his father. The
sacred rites of 'what isn't done' were established, and the mother
gradually found herself in the position of an outsider--a privileged
outsider, it is true, yet little more than the breeder of a
thoroughbred, admitted to the paddock to watch his horse run by its new
owner.

She vented her feelings in two or three tearful scenes, but she felt
that they lacked spontaneity, and didn't really put her heart into them.

During these struggles for her place in a Society that was probably
more completely masculine in domination than any in the world (with the
possible exception of that of the Turk), Lady Durwent was only dimly
aware that her daughter was developing a personality which presented a
much greater problem than that of the easily grooved Malcolm.

The girl's hair was like burnished copper, and her cheeks were lit by
two bits of scarlet that could be seen at a distance before her
features were discernible. Her eyes were of a gray-blue that changed