ime that it might please him, and you have
the apprehension of the woman who knows that possession constitutes
but few points of the law when there is ink and parchment to nullify
the whole transaction.

Jack, with a woman at his heels; a woman, moreover, whom he had
probably brought with him out of that dark abyss of the past; might
quite easily be a crushing blow to all her social power. Five thousand
pounds perhaps would be a difficult sum for him to raise--certainly
to raise immediately--but she had the proof before her that he was
striding into eminence and, as has been mentioned before in this
chapter, England is the only country in Europe which is a safe harbour
for the Jews.

So then she leapt to the conclusion. He was bringing a woman with
him to see the place. She pictured the creature vividly in her mind--a
woman with a large hat, red lips, a woman with a bold figure who knew
how to dress it brazenly, with eyes that danced to the whip of his
remarks; a woman who as mistress of Apsley, would make it impossible
for her ever to go near the place again. There was only one way to
meet the situation--a situation it had definitely become in the
sudden workings of her mind--and that was face to face, at Apsley,
in possession, with the servants at her command and the most gracious
of speeches on her lips. Tramping through the house alone, that woman
would be assigning rooms to their different owners, as if she were
already in possession; but with Mrs. Durlacher, the perfect artist,
as Jack had called her--she laughed unfeelingly when that phrase came
back to her mind--with herself at the woman's heels, telling her what
they did with this room and how in the hunting season they used that,
there would be little scope for exhibition of the proprietary
sentiment and, whoever the person might be, Mrs. Durlacher
guaranteed she should not shine on that occasion before her brother.

For that day, then, she had cancelled all her engagements. The
opening of the bazaar, a function at which she had felt it her duty
to be present, she crossed out of her book. From the dinner, to which
she and her husband had been asked on the evening previous to Traill's
visit to Apsley, she wrote and excused herself, saying she had been
called out of Town; and on the next morning she had ordered the car
to be round at the house in Sloane Street punctually at a quarter
to ten.

"Can't see why you have to give up the dinner and drive me out of