it as the turning-point in her daughter Agatha's fortunes.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker had, in fact, wondered more than a thousand times
why the Honourable Mrs. Harrington should do all for the FitzHenrys
and nothing for Agatha. She did not attempt to attribute reasons.
She knew her sex too well for that. She merely wondered, which
means that she cherished a question until it grew into a grievance.
The end of it she knew would be a quarrel. This might not come
until the FitzHenrys should have grown to man's estate and man's
privilege of quarrelling with his female relatives about the
youthful female relative of some other person. But it would come,
surely. Mrs. Ingham-Baker, the parasite, knew her victim, Mrs.
Harrington, well enough to be sure of that.

And now that this quarrel had arisen--much sooner than she could
have hoped--providentially brought about by an astronomical
examination-paper, Mrs. Ingham-Baker was forced to face the
humiliating fact that she felt sorry for Luke.

It would have been different had Agatha been present, but that
ingenious maiden was at school at Brighton. Had her daughter been
in the room, Mrs. Ingham-Baker's motherly instinct would have
narrowed itself down to her. But in the absence of her own child,
Luke's sorry plight appealed to that larger maternal instinct which
makes good women in unlikely places.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker was, however, one of the many who learn to curb
the impulse of a charitable intention. She looked out of the
window, and pretended not to notice that the culprit had addressed
his remark to her. To complete this convenient deafness she gave a