o loudly that he felt the whole smoking-room must be hearing
it....

Sec.8

As Lady Harman came up through the darkness of the drive to her home,
she was already regretting very deeply that she had not been content to
talk to Mr. Brumley in Kensington Gardens instead of accepting his
picturesque suggestion of Hampton Court. There was an unpleasant
waif-like feeling about this return. She was reminded of pictures
published in the interests of Doctor Barnardo's philanthropies,--Dr.
Barnardo her favourite hero in real life,--in which wistful little
outcasts creep longingly towards brightly lit but otherwise respectable
homes. It wasn't at all the sort of feeling she would have chosen if she
had had a choice of feelings. She was tired and dusty and as she came
into the hall the bright light was blinding. Snagsby took her wrap. "Sir
Isaac, me lady, 'as been enquiring for your ladyship," he communicated.

Sir Isaac appeared on the staircase.

"Good gracious, Elly!" he shouted. "Where you been?"

Lady Harman decided against an immediate reply. "I shall be ready for
dinner in half an hour," she told Snagsby and went past him to the
stairs.

Sir Isaac awaited her. "Where you been?" he repeated as she came up to
him.

A housemaid on the staircase and the second nursemaid on the nursery
landing above shared Sir Isaac's eagerness to hear her answer. But they
did not hear her answer, for Lady Harman with a movement that was all
too reminiscent of her mother's in the garden, swept past him towards
the door of her own room. He followed her and shut the door on the
thwarted listeners.

"Here!" he said, with a connubial absence of restraint. "Where the devil
you been? What the deuce do you think you've been getting up to?"

She had been calculating her answers since the moment she had realized
that she was to return home at a disadvantage. (It is not my business to
blame her for a certain disingenuousness; it is my business simply to
record it.) "I went out to lunch at Lady Beach-Mandarin's," she said. "I
told you I meant to."

"Lunch!" he cried. "Why, it's eight!"

"I met--some people. I met Agatha Alimony. I have a perfect right to go
out to lunch----"

"You met a nice crew I'll bet. But that don't account for your being out
to eight, does it? With all the confounded household doing as it
pleases!"

"I went on--to see the borders at Hampton Court."

"With _her_?"

"_Yes_," said Lady Harman....

It wasn't what