orrow then," said Lotty.

Rose wanted to say No again to this. Lotty would have in her
place, and would, besides, have expounded all her reasons. But she
could not turn herself inside out like that and invite any and
everybody to come and look. How was it that Lotty, who saw so many
things, didn't see stuck on her heart, and seeing keep quiet about it,
the sore place that was Frederick?

"Who is your husband?" asked Mrs. Fisher, carefully adjusting
another nut between the crackers.

"Who should he be," said Rose quickly, roused at once by Mrs.
Fisher to irritation, "except Mr. Arbuthnot?"

"I mean, of course, what is Mr. Arbuthnot?"

And Rose, gone painfully red at this, said after a tiny pause,
"My husband."

Naturally, Mrs. Fisher was incensed. She couldn't have believed
it of this one, with her decent hair and gentle voice, that she too
should be impertinent.

Chapter 14

That first week the wistaria began to fade, and the flowers of
the Judas-tree and peach-trees fell off and carpeted the ground with
rose-colour. Then all the freesias disappeared, and the irises grew
scarce. And then, while these were clearing themselves away, the
double banksia roses came out, and the big summer roses suddenly
flaunted gorgeously on the walls and trellises. Fortune's Yellow was
one of them; a very beautiful rose. Presently the tamarisk and the
daphnes were at their best, and the lilies at their tallest. By the
end of the week the fig-trees were giving shade, the plum-blossom was
out among the olives, the modest weigelias appeared in their fresh pink
clothes, and on the rocks sprawled masses of thick-leaved, star-shaped
flowers, some vivid purple and some a clear, pale lemon.

By the end of the week, too, Mr. Wilkins arrived; even as his
wife had foreseen he would, so he did. And there were signs almost of
eagerness about his acceptance of her suggestion, for he had not waited
to write a letter in answer to hers, but had telegraphed.

That, surely, was eager. It showed, Scrap thought, a definite
wish for reunion; and watching his wife's happy face, and aware of her
desire that Mellersh should enjoy his holiday, she told herself that he
would be a very unusual fool should he waste his time bothering about
anybody else. "If he isn't nice to her," Scrap thought, "he shall be
taken to the battlements and tipped over." For, by the end of the
week, she and Mrs. Wilkins had become Caroline and Lotty to eac