business.... I'm glad I'm not a small confectioner in a town he wants to
take up."

"He's--hard?"

"Merciless. Hasn't the beginnings of an idea of fair play.... None at
all.... No human give or take.... Are you going to have tea here, or are
you walking back now?"

Sec.3

It was fully a week before Mr. Brumley heard anything more of Lady
Harman. He began to fear that this shining furry presence would glorify
Black Strand no more. Then came a telegram that filled him with the
liveliest anticipations. It was worded: "Coming see cottage Saturday
afternoon Harman...."

On Saturday morning Mr. Brumley dressed with an apparent ease and
unusual care....

He worked rather discursively before lunch. His mind was busy picking up
the ends of their previous conversation and going on with them to all
sorts of bright knots, bows and elegant cats' cradling. He planned
openings that might give her tempting opportunities of confidences if
she wished to confide, and artless remarks and questions that would make
for self-betrayal if she didn't. And he thought of her, he thought of
her imaginatively, this secluded rare thing so happily come to him, who
was so young, so frank and fresh and so unhappily married (he was sure)
to a husband at least happily mortal. Yes, dear Reader, even on that
opening morning Mr. Brumley's imagination, trained very largely upon
Victorian literature and _belles-lettres_, leapt forward to the very
ending of this story.... We, of course, do nothing of the sort, our lot
is to follow a more pedestrian route.... He lapsed into a vague series
of meditations, slower perhaps but essentially similar, after his
temperate palatable lunch.

He was apprised of the arrival of his visitor by the sudden indignant
yaup followed by the general subdued uproar of a motor-car outside the
front door, even before Clarence, this time amazingly prompt, assaulted
the bell. Then the whole house was like that poem by Edgar Allan Poe,
one magnificent texture of clangour.

At the first toot of the horn Mr. Brumley had moved swiftly into the
bay, and screened partly by the life-size Venus of Milo that stood in
the bay window, and partly by the artistic curtains, surveyed the
glittering vehicle. He was first aware of a vast fur coat enclosing a
lean grey-headed obstinate-looking man with a diabetic complexion who
was fumbling with the door of the car and preventing Clarence's
assistance. Mr. Brumley was able to remark that the