before whom Colonel Chart preferred not to discuss the situation.
Adela recognised on the spot that if things were to go as he wished
his children would practically never again be alone with him. He
would spend all his time with Mrs. Churchley till they were married,
and then Mrs. Churchley would spend all her time with him. Adela was
ashamed of him, and that was horrible--all the more that every one
else would be, all his other friends, every one who had known her
mother. But the public dishonour to that high memory shouldn't be
enacted; he shouldn't do as he wished.

After breakfast her father remarked to her that it would give him
pleasure if in a day or two she would take her sisters to see their
friend, and she replied that he should be obeyed. He held her hand a
moment, looking at her with an argument in his eyes which presently
hardened into sternness. He wanted to know that she forgave him, but
also wanted to assure her that he expected her to mind what she did,
to go straight. She turned away her eyes; she was indeed ashamed of
him.

She waited three days and then conveyed her sisters to the repaire,
as she would have been ready to term it, of the lioness. That queen
of beasts was surrounded with callers, as Adela knew she would be; it
was her "day" and the occasion the girl preferred. Before this she
had spent all her time with her companions, talking to them about
their mother, playing on their memory of her, making them cry and
making them laugh, reminding them of blest hours of their early
childhood, telling them anecdotes of her own. None the less she
confided to them that she believed there was no harm at all in Mrs.
Churchley, and that when the time should come she would probably take
them out immensely. She saw with smothered irritation that they