ial luncheon, his deliberate foreseeing mind had
been planning such a retreat. Black Strand even at his first visit had
appeared to him in the light of a great opportunity, and the crisis of
their quarrel did but release that same torrential energy which had
carried him to a position of Napoleonic predominance in the world of
baking, light catering and confectionery, into the channels of a scheme
already very definitely formed in his mind.

His first proceeding after the long hours of sleepless passion that had
followed his wife's Hampton Court escapade, had been to place himself in
communication with Mr. Brumley. He learnt at Mr. Brumley's club that
that gentleman had slept there overnight and had started but a quarter
of an hour before, back to Black Strand. Sir Isaac in hot pursuit and
gathering force and assistance in mid flight reached Black Strand by
midday.

It was with a certain twinge of the conscience that Mr. Brumley
perceived his visitor, but it speedily became clear that Sir Isaac had
no knowledge of the guilty circumstances of the day before. He had come
to buy Black Strand--incontinently, that was all. He was going, it
became clear at once, to buy it with all its fittings and furnishings as
it stood, lock, stock and barrel. Mr. Brumley, concealing that wild
elation, that sense of a joyous rebirth, that only the liquidation of
nearly all one's possessions can give, was firm but not excessive. Sir
Isaac haggled as a wave breaks and then gave in and presently they were
making a memorandum upon the pretty writing-desk beneath the traditional
rose Euphemia had established there when Mr. Brumley was young and
already successful.

This done, and it was done in less than fifteen minutes, Sir Isaac
produced a rather crumpled young architect from the motor-car as a
conjurer might produce a rabbit from a hat, a builder from Aleham
appeared astonishingly in a dog-cart--he had been summoned by
telegram--and Sir Isaac began there and then to discuss alterations,
enlargements and, more particularly, with a view to his nursery
requirements, the conversion of the empty barn into a nursery wing and
its connexion with the house by a corridor across the shrubbery.

"It will take you three months," said the builder from Aleham. "And the
worst time of the year coming."

"It won't take three weeks--if I have to bring down a young army from
London to do it," said Sir Isaac.

"But such a thing as plastering----"

"We won