all the world
was there for Lady Harman to set her back against? During the last few
days Mr. Brumley's mind had been busy with the details of impassioned
elopements conducted in the most exalted spirit, but now in the actual
presence of the lady these projects did in the most remarkable manner
vanish.

"Couldn't you," he said at last, "go somewhere?" And then with an air of
being meticulously explicit, "I mean, isn't there somewhere, where you
might safely go?"

(And in his dreams he had been crossing high passes with her; he had
halted suddenly and stayed her mule. In his dream because he was a man
of letters and a poet it was always a mule, never a _train de luxe_.
"Look," he had said, "below there,--_Italy!_--the country you have never
seen before.")

"There's nowhere," she answered.

"Now _where_?" asked Mr. Brumley, "and how?" with the tone and something
of the gesture of one who racks his mind. "If you only trust yourself to
me----Oh! Lady Harman, if I dared ask it----"

He became aware of Sir Isaac walking across the lawn towards them....

The two men greeted each other with a reasonable cordiality. "I wanted
to see how you were getting on down here," said Mr. Brumley, "and
whether there was anything I could do for you."

"We're getting on all right," said Sir Isaac with no manifest glow of
gratitude.

"You've altered the old barn--tremendously."

"Come and see it," said Sir Isaac. "It's a wing."

Mr. Brumley remained seated. "It was the first thing that struck me,
Lady Harman. This evidence of Sir Isaac's energy."

"Come and look over it," Sir Isaac persisted.

Mr. Brumley and Lady Harman rose together.

"One's enough to show him that," said Sir Isaac.

"I was telling Lady Harman how much we missed her at Lady Viping's, Sir
Isaac."

"It was on account of the drains," Sir Isaac explained. "You can't--it's
foolhardy to stay a day when the drains are wrong, dinners or no
dinners."

"You know _I_ was extremely sorry not to come to Lady Viping's. I hope
you'll tell her. I wrote."

But Mr. Brumley didn't remember clearly enough to make any use of that.

"Everybody naturally _is_ sorry on an occasion of that sort," said Sir
Isaac. "But you come and see what we've done in that barn. In three
weeks. They couldn't have got it together in three months ten years ago.
It's--system."

Mr. Brumley still tried to cling to Lady Harman.

"Have you been interested in this building?" he asked.

"I sti