"Don't tell me." Lord Hartledon looked at her, begged her pardon, and quitted the room with his cigar.

Lady Maude, black as night, dashed her pencil on to the cardboard, and scored her sketch all over with ugly black lines.

Her face itself looked ugly then.
"Why did he say this to me ?" she asked of her fevered heart.

"Was it said with a purpose?
Has he found out that I _love_ him?
that my shallow old mother is one of the subtlest of the anglers?
and that--" "What on earth are you at with your drawing, Maude ?" "Oh, I have grown sick of the sketch.

I am not in a drawing mood to-day, mamma." "And how fierce you were looking," pursued the countess-dowager, who had darted in at rather an inopportune moment for Maude--darting in on people at such moments being her habit.