her
part in the bargain.

"Can't keep the car waiting," was what Brumley could distinguish in his
reply.

"I expect you have a perfectly splendid car, Sir Isaac," said Lady
Beach-Mandarin, drawing him out. "Quite the modernest thing."

Sir Isaac replied with the reluctance of an Income Tax Return that it
was a forty-five Rolls Royce, good of course but nothing amazing.

"We must see it," she said, and turned his retreat into a procession.

She admired the car, she admired the colour of the car, she admired the
lamps of the car and the door of the car and the little fittings of the
car. She admired the horn. She admired the twist of the horn. She
admired Clarence and the uniform of Clarence and she admired and coveted
the great fur coat that he held ready for his employer. (But if she had
it, she said, she would wear the splendid fur outside to show every
little bit of it.) And when the car at last moved forward and
tooted--she admired the note--and vanished softly and swiftly through
the gates, she was left in the porch with Mr. Brumley still by sheer
inertia admiring and envying. She admired Sir Isaac's car number Z 900.
(Such an easy one to remember!) Then she stopped abruptly, as one might
discover that the water in the bathroom was running to waste and turn it
off.

She had a cynicism as exuberant as the rest of her.

"Well," she said, with a contented sigh and an entire flattening of her
tone, "I laid it on pretty thick that time.... I wonder if he'll send me
that hundred guineas or whether I shall have to remind him of it...."
Her manner changed again to that of a gigantic gamin. "I mean to have
that money," she said with bright determination and round eyes....

She reflected and other thoughts came to her. "Plutocracy," she said,
"_is_ perfectly detestable, don't you think so, Mr. Brumley?" ... And
then, "I can't _imagine_ how a man who deals in bread and confectionery
can manage to go about so completely half-baked."

"He's a very remarkable type," said Mr. Brumley.

He became urgent: "I do hope, dear Lady Beach-Mandarin, you will
contrive to call on Lady Harman. She is--in relation to _that_--quite
the most interesting woman I have seen."

Sec.6

Presently as they paced the croquet lawn together, the preoccupation of
Mr. Brumley's mind drew their conversation back to Lady Harman.

"I wish," he repeated, "you would go and see these people. She's not at
all what you might infer from him."

"Wh