"God made a foolish woman, making me!" "Have you any idea whom we shall meet ?" It is Barbara who asks this one morning at breakfast.

The question refers to a three days' visit that it has become our fate to pay to a house in the neighborhood--a house not eight miles distant from Tempest, and over which we are grumbling in the minute and exhaustive manner which people mostly employ when there is a question of making merry with their friends.
I shake my head.
"I have not an idea, that is to say, except Mrs.Huntley, and she goes without saying!" "Why ?" "We are known to be such inseparables, that she is always asked to meet us," reply I, with that wintry smile, which is my last accomplishment.
"We pursue her round the country, do not we, Roger ?" Barbara opens her great eyes, but, with her usual tact, she says nothing.

She sees that she has fallen on stony ground.
"She is _the oldest friend that we have in the world_!" continue I, laughing pleasantly.
Roger does not answer, he does not even look up, but by a restless movement that he makes in his chair, by a tiny contraction of the brows, I see that my shot has told.

I am becoming an adept in the infliction of these pin-pricks.

It is one of the few pleasures I have left.
The day of our visit has come.