ng Lady Harman with an entirely unnecessary and
unpremeditated intentness, that for the briefest interval her attention
flashed over Lady Beach-Mandarin's shoulder to the end verandah window;
and following her glance, he saw--and then he did not see--the arrested
figure, the white face of Sir Isaac, bearing an expression in which
anger and horror were extraordinarily intermingled. If it was Sir Isaac
he dodged back with amazing dexterity; if it was a phantom of the living
it vanished with an air of doing that. Without came the sound of a
flower-pot upset and a faint expletive. Mr. Brumley looked very quickly
at Lady Beach-Mandarin, who was entirely unconscious of anything but her
own uncoiling and enveloping eloquence, and as quickly at Miss Sharsper.
But Miss Sharsper was examining a blackish bureau through her glasses as
though she were looking for birthmarks and meant if she could find one
to claim the piece as her own long-lost connection. With a mild but
gratifying sense of exclusive complicity Mr. Brumley reverted to Lady
Harman's entire self-possession.

"But, dear Lady Harman, it's entirely unnecessary you should consult
him,--entirely," Lady Beach-Mandarin was saying.

"I'm sure," said Mr. Brumley with a sense that somehow he had to
intervene, "that Sir Isaac would not possibly object. I'm sure that if
Lady Harman consults him----"

The sandy-whiskered butler appeared hovering.

"Shall I place the tea-things in the garden, me lady?" he asked, in the
tone of one who knows the answer.

"Oh _please_ in the garden!" cried Lady Beach-Mandarin. "Please! And how
delightful to _have_ a garden, a London garden, in which one _can_ have
tea. Without being smothered in blacks. The south-west wind. The dear
_English_ wind. All your blacks come to _us_, you know."

She led the way upon the verandah. "Such a wonderful garden! The space,
the breadth! Why! you must have Acres!"

She surveyed the garden--comprehensively; her eye rested for a moment on
a distant patch of black that ducked suddenly into a group of lilacs.
"Is dear Sir Isaac at home?" she asked.

"He's very uncertain," said Lady Harman, with a quiet readiness that
pleased Mr. Brumley. "Yes, Snagsby, please, under the big cypress. And
tell my mother and sister."

Lady Beach-Mandarin having paused a moment or so upon the verandah
admiring the garden as a whole, now prepared to go into details. She
gathered her ample skirts together and advanced into the mid