But the fact was patent.

Throughout the diversions or occupations of the forty-eight hours' visit, Mrs.Meadows was either ignored, snubbed, or contradicted.

Only Arthur Meadows, indeed, measuring himself with delight, for the first time, against some of the keenest brains in the country, failed to see it.

His blindness allowed Lady Dunstable to run a somewhat dangerous course, unchecked.

She risked alienating a man whom she particularly wished to attract; she excited a passion of antagonism in Doris's generally equable breast, and was quite aware of it.
Notwithstanding, she followed her whim; and by the Sunday evening there existed between the great lady and her guest a state of veiled war, in which the strokes were by no means always to the advantage of Lady Dunstable.
Doris, for instance, with other guests, expressed a wish to attend morning service on Sunday at a famous cathedral some three miles away.
Lady Dunstable immediately announced that everybody who wished to go to church would go to the village church within the park, for which alone carriages would be provided.