brella had appeared since
their arrival. He glanced at Miss Sharsper but she was keenly occupied
with the table legs. He began to breathe freely again when the partings
were over and he could get back into the automobile. "Toot," said the
horn and he made a last grave salutation to the slender white figure on
the steps. The great butler stood at the side of the entrance and a step
or so below her, with the air of a man who has completed a difficult
task. A small attentive valet hovered out of the shadows behind.

Sec.5

(A fragment of the conversation in Lady Beach-Mandarin's returning
automobile may be recorded in a parenthesis here.

"But did you see Sir Isaac?" she cried, abruptly.

"Sir Isaac?" defended the startled Mr. Brumley. "Where?"

"He was dodging about in the garden all the time."

"Dodging about the garden!... I saw a sort of gardener----"

"I'm sure I saw Him," said Lady Beach-Mandarin. "Positive. He hid away
in the mushroom shed. The one you found locked."

"But my _dear_ Lady Beach-Mandarin!" protested Mr. Brumley with the air
of one who listens to preposterous suggestions. "What can make you
think----?"

"Oh I _know_ I saw him," said Lady Beach-Mandarin. "I know. He seemed
all over the place. Like a Boy Scout. Didn't you see him too, Susan?"

Miss Sharsper was roused from deep preoccupation. "What, dear?" she
asked.

"See Sir Isaac?"

"Sir Isaac?"

"Dodging about the garden when we went through it."

The novelist reflected. "I didn't notice," she said. "I was busy
observing things.")

Sec.6

Lady Beach-Mandarin's car passed through the open gates and was
swallowed up in the dusty stream of traffic down Putney Hill; the great
butler withdrew, the little manservant vanished, Mrs. Sawbridge and her
elder daughter had hovered and now receded from the back of the hall;
Lady Harman remained standing thoughtfully in the large
Bulwer-Lyttonesque doorway of her house. Her face expressed a vague
expectation. She waited to be addressed from behind.

Then she became aware of the figure of her husband standing before her.
He had come out of the laurels in front. His pale face was livid with
anger, his hair dishevelled, there was garden mould and greenness upon
his knees and upon his extended hands.

She was startled out of her quiet defensiveness. "Why, Isaac!" she
cried. "Where have you been?"

It enraged him further to be asked so obviously unnecessary a question.
He forgot his knight