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270 looked into the hall, where two men were struggling to get up the narrow stairs one of Edith's huge boxes. In this mood of righteous indignation Nina looked exactly like their mother, Teresa thought. All her puritan ancestry spoke in the cold flame of her blue eyes and the hardness of her mouth.

"Why did you make it up before?" asked Teresa in a low voice. The walls of the chalet were so thin, and noises echoed so through its low-ceilinged rooms, that she thought the visitor, in the room above, must almost have heard Nina's last incisive remark.

"Oh, because—because the family of course didn't want a scandal—and then Egisto is fond of her, in spite of everything—and she came and begged and pleaded—promised anything, if only I'd help her. But now I shall tell her—I really must tell her—that I can't have her here."

At tea-time that day Edith came down, and Teresa saw a tall, fair woman, very English in type, with a tea-rose complexion, large blue eyes, and light-brown hair curled elaborately over her forehead. She wore a loose, clinging dress of pale mauve crêpe, she was rather carelessly powdered, and her eyelids were pink. Her hands trembled nervously as she took her tea-cup, and she drank several cups of almost black tea, and then began to smoke. She pleaded fatigue as an excuse for not talking—a sleepless night in the