As for their father, he had an active dislike of her. He had cause, no doubt. More than once he had tried to break the spell of her dominion, but somehow it had always proved too strong for him. It was not that he was a weak man altogether, but there is a type born to female tyranny, an affair of the stars, of human destiny. Charlotte despised her brother. In her view he was a lath painted to look like iron, but insight into character was not her strength. She owed her position in the family to dynamic power, to force of will; but in her own mind it was always ascribed to the fact that she acted invariably from the highest motives.
"Muriel not here," said the conversational Marjorie, looking across the table to Sarah.
"Gone to the East End, I believe, to one of her committees."
It would have been nearer the truth for the eldest flower, who was dealing with a recalcitrant fragment of lobster in a masterful manner, to have said that Muriel had gone to luncheon at Hayes with the Penarths. But Sarah, who did not approve of Muriel, and still less of the Penarths, was content with a general statement whose flagrant inaccuracy somehow crystallized her attitude towards them both. Muriel had become frankly impossible. The higher expediency could no longer take her seriously.
But there are degrees of wisdom, even among the elect. Sarah's place was assured at Minerva's Court, but Marjorie and Blanche were wiser perhaps in matters equine than in other things. Where angels feared to tread Blanche, at any rate, for reasons of her own, had some-
