ersation practically at the point where it
had broken off in Mrs. Frothingham's drawing-room. A tactful question
assured the man of the world that Mrs. Carnaby knew nothing of certain
passages at Munich and Bregenz.

'I'm afraid,' he added, 'Mrs. Rolfe has become a little reserved.
Natural, no doubt.'

'She lives in a wild part of Wales,' Sibyl answered, smiling
tolerantly. 'And her husband detests society.'

'Indeed? Odd choice for her to have made, don't you think?--And so your
Odyssey is over? We shall have some chance of seeing you again.'

'But your own Odyssey is perpetually going on. Are you ever in town
except for a few weeks of the season?'

'Oh, I go about very little now; I'm settling down.--You never met my
sister, I think? She has a house at Wimbledon with a good-sized
garden--sort of little park, in fact,--and I have persuaded her to let
me build myself a bungalow among the trees.'

'Splendid idea!'

'Not bad, I think. One is free there; a member of the family whenever
one likes; domesticated; all that's respectable; and only a few steps
away, the bachelor snuggery, with all that's----. No, no! I was _not_
going to complete the antithesis, though by your smiling you seem to
say so.'

'The suggestion was irresistible,' said Sibyl, with the composure, the
air of security, which always covered her excursions on to slippery
ground.

'When the weather is good, I ask a few of my friends to come and sit
there in the shade. They may or may not be my sister's friends also;
that doesn't matter. I have a separate entrance from the road.--But I
wish you knew Mrs. Fenimore. She lived a year or two at Stuttgart, for
her children to learn German. Her husband's in India. She tried it, but
couldn't stand the climate.'

'And you really live in the bungalow?' inquired Mrs. Carnaby,
disregarding this information about Redgrave's sister.

'Yes, it's my headquarters in England. Let me send you a card, will
you, when I have my next afternoon? It might amuse you, and I assure
you it _is_ perfectly respectable.'

'How could I doubt it, if you invite me?'

Alma drove home by herself in a hansom. She liked this disregard of
conventionalities; all the more because Harvey, who, of course, had sat
up for her, seemed a trifle anxious. Her spirits were exuberant; she
gave a merry, mocking account of the evening, but it included no
mention of Cyrus Redgrave.

At the end of June her friends the Leaches moved from their o