“The long and the short of it is you’ve been overdoing it ever since you came to live in Switzerland. You’ve just gone at everything in your usual headlong fashion regardless of everything else. No one can go on doing that sort of thing indefinitely. Now see where it’s landed you!”

Lady Russell stopped for breath at this point and eyed her younger sister severely, with one hand held up to enforce silence until she had finished. Joey Maynard, who had been lying back on her pillows, regarding her sister with an expression of awed admiration—Madge Russell had been holding forth for the last ten minutes and this was the first time she had stopped—paid not the slightest attention to the uplifted hand. She raised herself to turn and stare at the windows down which the rain was streaming so heavily that it was impossible to see out.