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She became, of course, as the months went by, outwardly more amenable—was tamed as a wolf-cub can be tamed, into a semblance of domesticity. There came, at least, an end to the flinging of a frantic body from side to side of its cage. She bruised herself at last into a state of acquiescence, and even learned to do tricks. But she never forgot that she was trapped. Aunt Adela, taking Wilfred and James to her well-meaning heart, would wonder why it was so much more difficult to do her duty by Laura. Laura had been naughty at first, but under her, Adela’s, wise management she was certainly settling down. Yet there was something about her that Adela found, she hardly knew why, disturbing—distressing even. Why couldn’t Laura be more like other children? Why, for instance, would she not make friends with the playfellows of Adela’s anxious choice? A conscientious aunt might well plume herself on the advantages she could confer—advantages that her late lamented, yet (between you and her) eccentric sister-in-law had never troubled to procure for an excessively spoiled daughter. There were the Vicar’s daughters—such well-behaved children. There were the two nieces of Brackenhurst’s great man, old Timothy Cloud, thrice Mayor of the neighbouring market town before he died and had a stained glass window in Brackenhurst parish church. And there was the son himself, young Justin Cloud, though he was at school of course, and older, but nominally at least an ornament of a most select little circle.