know how I was getting on.... Yes ... yes ... I shall come back
presently.... No ... no ... _absolutely_ no.... I can't
possibly tell you my present address ... but you needn't worry.
I'm _quite_ all right ... eh?... No ... I'm not unfeeling--this
is just my holiday. I shall be back in a few weeks. I send you my love.
Good-by."

"That do, Mr. Wild?"

"You might send a kiss, eh? Usual thing ... try again--I bet she's not
left the wire."

"Hello ... hello! You there, Alicia?... _Wheeee!_... I just rang
up--_wheee_--to send you a kiss.... Good-by."

"So we've set her mind at rest, Bangs. You lost your funk pretty soon!"

"Well, Mr. Wild, somehow ... it's not quite the same thing talking to
Alicia from a distance ... I felt quite brave!"

"Perfect hero!... Now we've settled that, let's go and find the dragon
in the garden."

They found the vicar, but not the dragon, who was lashing her tail in
the pantry, impotent, speechless, aflame with anger. To hear herself
called a dragon, and by a pair of unprincipled adventurers! One of them,
it appeared, was a man who had run away from his wife; the other, an
idle fribble who might be anything. "Thank Heaven I have no daughter in
the house!" thought Mrs. Peters in a paroxysm of resentful propriety.
"Who could feel safe with such men about? And this comes of Charles
picking up chance acquaintances in a common tavern! Oh, I must go and
tell him--expose them at once! The impudent hypocrites!"

On the threshold she paused. Was it because, despite her justification,
she did not feel anxious to mention the vigil in the pantry? Or was it
due to a wifely consideration for a husband's weakness? She chose to
believe the latter. "Charles will not have the moral courage to expel
them from the vicarage!" she reflected. "He is pitifully craven in such
matters. I must manage it myself.... I had better wait and watch....
They may have any designs.... Perhaps I had better wait, and then ..." A
smile, terrific in severity and menace, writhed her lips. Some signal
act of vengeance was evidently maturing. "Yes! I will wait!"

On the lawn she found Tony. Compelling herself to speak without undue
hostility, she learned that the vicar had carried Robert off to inspect
the greenhouse. Mrs. Peters, on the plea of a message, followed. She
could not trust herself with Robert or his accomplice. "Is it he who has
led Mr. Bangs astray, or the other way about?" she wondered viciously.
"They both seem