True he went to Roussillon place almost every day, it being a fixed part of his well ordered habit, and had a talk with her.

Sometimes, when Dame Roussillon was very busy and so quite off her guard, they read together in a novel, or in certain parts of the odd volume of Montaigne.

This was done more for the sweetness of disobedience than to enjoy the already familiar pages.
Now and again they repeated their fencing bout; but never with the result which followed the first.

Beverley soon mastered Alice's tricks and showed her that, after all, masculine muscle is not to be discounted at its own game by even the most wonderful womanly strength and suppleness.

She struggled bravely to hold her vantage ground once gained so easily, but the inevitable was not to be avoided.