Christine had got out of Mela that her father had been at Beaton's studio; and then she had gone at the old man and got from him every smallest fact of the interview there.

She had flung back in his teeth the good-will toward herself with which he had gone to Beaton.

She was furious with shame and resentment; she told him he had made bad worse, that he had made a fool of himself to no end; she spared neither his age nor his grief-broken spirit, in which his will could not rise against hers.

She filled the house with her rage, screaming it out upon him; but when her fury was once spent, she began to have some hopes from what her father had done.

She no longer kept her bed; every evening she dressed herself in the dress Beaton admired the most, and sat up till a certain hour to receive him.