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286 could not be quiet any more than vigorous children. The thing was to direct their insensate energising into the least harmful channels. She had never tried very much to direct Basil. She thought of him now as a small boy shut up in the house on a rainy day, and told to make no noise. Yes, that had been her attitude toward him all that last winter—and she had paid for it. She had given the other woman her chance. A sudden flood of rage against Isabel welled up in her and dried her tears. She considered ways and means of being revenged upon her. The blood beating in her temples told her how it was possible to stab, to poison, to choke a rival. Something wild rose in her, as a thousand times before, at the thought of their caresses, and all the softness of her mood was gone. The tender letter to Basil, like so many others she had imagined or even begun, was never written.

Crayven arrived in a pouring rain, which continued for a week, turning the one street of the little town into a gutter of mud, and veiling all its surroundings. Teresa was perfectly aware that he came to see her, and she was inwardly grateful for his caprice. It was difficult for her to live without some society, and that of Nina, Edith, and Ernesto presented too many complications, while the few acquaintances that she had .made through them did not interest her. Cray-