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 with a cynical humor which Miriam noted as new. There was also something new in his eyes. "I for one," he said, "am glad."

"Why?"

"Simply in the name of poetic justice. It's time Mrs. Eveley got a bit of her own back,—and Boadicea there will get it for her with a vengeance."

Miriam gave him a smiling nod and went to obey Louise's summons.

Dismayed by the astonished hush which had fallen over the hall when Aunt Denise had appeared on the staircase and come slowly towards her, Louise had quickly appreciated the dramatic value of the intrusion, and when she had manoeuvred every one safely to the table she acknowledged that the preliminary touch of solemnity had given her dinner party a tone which, instead of diminishing, would incalculably augment the triumph she had, for months now, determined that it should be. She had known Aunt Denise only as a formidable quantity in her background, an aunt she had seen during a single summer, after her mother's death, but with whom she had corresponded in a sentimental desire to maintain contact with the only relative she could claim, except for some half mythical cousins in Dublin. That her letters to Aunt Denise and her gifts of needlework had been seeds sown on fertile ground was now abundantly manifest; for Aunt Denise had assumed a protective kinship and had made that mysterious