as, she hoped and believed, respectable and well-meaning.
It is true she also had invaded her sitting-room, but no doubt she
had been dragged there by the other one, and Mrs. Fisher had little if
anything against Mrs. Arbuthnot, and observed with approval that she
only drank water. That was as it should be. So, indeed, to give her
her dues, did the freckled one; and very right at their age. She
herself drank wine, but with what moderation: one meal, one glass.
And she was sixty-five, and might properly, and even beneficially, have
had a least two.

"That," she said to Lady Caroline, cutting right across what Mrs.
Wilkins was telling them about her wonderful day and indicating the
wine-glass, "is very bad for you."

Lady Caroline, however, could not have heard, for she continued
to sip, her elbow on the table, and listen to what Mrs. Wilkins was
saying.

And what was it she was saying? She had invited somebody to come
and stay? A man?

Mrs. Fisher could not credit her ears. Yet it evidently was a
man, for she spoke of the person as he.

Suddenly and for the first time--but then this was most
important--Mrs. Fisher addressed Mrs. Wilkins directly. She was
sixty-five, and cared very little what sorts of women she happened to
be with for a month, but if the women were to be mixed with men it was
a different proposition altogether. She was not going to be made a
cat's-paw of. She had not come out there to sanction by her presence
what used in her day to be called fast behaviour. Nothing had been
said at the interview in London about men; if there had been she would
have declined, of course to come.

"What is his name?" asked Mrs. Fisher, abruptly interposing.

Mrs. Wilkins turned to her with a slight surprise. "Wilkins,"
she said.

"Wilkins?"

"Yes,"

"Your name?"

"And his."

"A relation?"

"Not blood."

"A connection?"

"A husband."

Mrs. Fisher once more cast down her eyes. She could not talk to
Mrs. Wilkins. There was something about the things she said. . . "A
husband." Suggesting one of many. Always that unseemly twist to
everything. Why could she not say "My husband"? Besides, Mrs. Fisher
had, she herself knew not for what reason, taken both the Hampstead
young women for widows. War ones. There had been an absence of
mention of husbands at the interview which would not, she considered,
be natural if such persons did after all exist. And if a husband was
not a relation, wh