e Uncle
Richard. _How_ surprised he'd be and how he'd disapprove!"

In Lady Carloes' small and stuffy drawing-room bony Mrs. Brunning and
Lord Crewner were being polite to one another. One would suppose that it
had been Lady Carloes' intention to gather together into a confined
space as many of her grandmother's possessions as possible. Her
grandmother had known Sir Walter Scott and had Lord Wellington to tea
and spent several days in the country with Joanna Baillie. The little
room had an old faded wall-paper covered thickly with prints, miniatures
and fading water-colours. On the many little tables were scattered old
keepsakes, "bijouterie" of every kind, dragon china, coloured stones and
even an ebony box with sea-shells. There were cabinets and glass cases,
several chattering clocks, nodding mandarins and shepherdesses on the
mantelpiece, a faded illustrated edition of Sir Walter's poems and,
finally, three cats with large blue bows and tinkling bells. All these
things added, immensely, to Rachel's distress; on such an evening this
jumble of small objects rose, like the sound of the sea, and threatened
to throttle her. A fire was burning and only the upper part of one
window was open. Rachel felt that she was in real peril of fainting;
that she had never done, but to-night she had the sensation that at any
moment the floor with its old faded carpet would rise slanting before
her and pitch her into the street. Lady Carloes, more hunched together
than usual, her voice thick and husky and her dress of blue satin,
hurried in. Uncle Richard, untouched by the closeness of the evening,
clean and starched and dignified, made his majestic entry; a young man
from the Embassy, so beautifully dressed that he appeared to have spent
his days in the effort to make his personality of less importance than
his studs and his waistcoat buttons, apologized from behind his shining
collar for being the last of the party. They all went down to dinner.

Rachel felt, as the young man led her downstairs, that at last she knew
what Panic was. Panic was the state of standing, surrounded by ordinary
everyday things and people, waiting for the bolt to fall, the enemy to
advance, danger to spring, but seeing, in actual vision, nothing to
justify terror. She had reached to-night the climax of months of alarm,
and, during these past days, unbroken suspense. She was at the end of
endurance....

How was she ever to compass this horrible meal? The yo