Durant\'s time was up, but the Colonel had pressed him to stay another week. He was affectionate; he was firm; he would take no refusal. He dwelt on the advantages of a prolonged visit. "A little change," said he, "does us all good. You young fellows are apt to get into a groove. But you seem brighter since you came. I think we\'ve shaken you up a bit."

Indeed, at no time had there been room for any doubt as to the sincerity of his welcome. Though he was so determined to shake Durant up, to get him out of his groove, and give him fresh ideas, he betrayed a pitiable dependence on the young fellow. He endeavored to meet youth on its own ground; he made piteous experiments in the frivolous. More than once Durant had suspected that the poor gentleman had asked him down as a protection from the terrors of his own society. His intellectual resources were evidently giving out. The barometer was stationary; a fortnight\'s almost persistent sunshine had dried up the source of ideas. Having gutted the Nineteenth Century, his mind seemed to be impotently raging for fresh matter to destroy. He repeated himself eternally; the same phrases were always in his mouth. "A fad, a theory, a name for ignorance." "Don\'t tell me; it\'s an insult to my intelligence!" Durant could have been sorry for him if he had not been so infinitely sorry for himself.

On Monday morning Frida Tancred was herself again; not her old self, but the new one that Durant had learned to know and tolerate. She sought him out after breakfast and seconded the Colonel\'s invitation. [Pg 286]

"If you could possibly stop, Mr. Durant, I wish you would. I\'m asking a favor. My cousin, Georgie Chatterton, is coming down on Wednesday to stay. I don\'t know how long. I\'ve never seen her before, and she\'s a young girl."

Frida\'s voice expressed a certain horror.

"Well, what of that?"

"If there\'s one thing on earth that I\'m afraid of, it\'s a young girl. If you could only stay on just to amuse her a little, to help her through her first week! You see, it\'ll be so desperately dull for her if you don\'t."

He laughed; there was no other way of responding to the na?veté of the request.

"It doesn\'t really seem fair to ask her when she hasn\'t an idea—I can\'t think why father did it. Perhaps he didn\'t. It\'s odd, but I\'ve noticed that, when anything like this happens, Mrs. Fazakerly is always at the bottom of it."

Another lurid light on Mrs. Fazakerly!

"Was Mrs. Fazakerly at the bottom of his asking me?"

She smiled. "To tell you the honest truth, she was. Not but what he is delighted to have you here. I don\'t know when I\'ve seen him so happy, so interested in anyone. But, you see, he\'s fearfully conservative; he can\'t bear to take the first step in anything."

He saw. The Colonel might be as conservative as he pleased; but the old order was changing; Coton Manor was on the eve of a revolution. He saw it all clearly, that deep-laid plot of Mrs. Fazakerly\'s. He had been asked down at her suggestion to keep Frida Tancred out of the way for the moment, o............