"What ARE you reading, Miss Wade?" Lady Meadowcroft cried at last, quite
savagely. It made her angry to see anybody else pleased and occupied
when she herself was listless.
"A delightful book!" Hilda answered. "The Buddhist Praying Wheel, by
William Simpson."
Lady Meadowcroft took it from her and turned the pages over with a
languid air. "Looks awfully dull!" she observed, with a faint smile, at
last, returning it.
"It's charming," Hilda retorted, glancing at one of the illustrations.
"It explains so much. It shows one why one turns round one's chair at
cards for luck; and why, when a church is consecrated, the bishop walks
three times about it sunwise."
"Our Bishop is a dreadfully prosy old gentleman," Lady Meadowcroft
answered, gliding off at a tangent on a personality, as is the wont of
her kind; "he had, oh, such a dreadful quarrel with my father over the
rules of the St. Alphege Schools at Millington."
"Indeed," Hilda answered, turning once more to her book. Lady
Meadowcroft looked annoyed. It would never have occurred to her that
within a few weeks she was to owe her life to that very abstruse work,
and what Hilda had read in it.
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