mmle's eye the dawning defiance of the respectful
subordinate who has been pressed too hard.

"I couldn't exactly say the hour, Madam, because I didn't let the
gentleman in," she replied, with the air of magnanimously ignoring the
irregularity of her mistress's course.

"You didn't let him in?"

"No, Madam. When the bell rang I was dressing, and Agnes--"

"Go and ask Agnes, then," Mary interjected. Trimmle still wore her
look of patient magnanimity. "Agnes would not know, Madam, for she had
unfortunately burnt her hand in trying the wick of the new lamp from
town--" Trimmle, as Mary was aware, had always been opposed to the new
lamp--"and so Mrs. Dockett sent the kitchen-maid instead."

Mary looked again at the clock. "It's after two! Go and ask the
kitchen-maid if Mr. Boyne left any word."

She went into luncheon without waiting, and Trimmle presently brought
her there the kitchen-maid's statement that the gentleman had called
about one o'clock, that Mr. Boyne had gone out with him without leaving
any message. The kitchen-maid did not even know the caller's name, for
he had written it on a slip of paper, which he had folded and handed to
her, with the injunction to deliver it at once to Mr. Boyne.

Mary finished her luncheon, still wondering, and when it was over,
and Trimmle had brought the coffee to the drawing-room, her wonder had
deepened to a first faint tinge of disquietude. It was unlike Boyne
to absent himself without explanation at so unwonted an hour, and the
difficulty of identifying the visitor whose summons he had apparently
obeyed made his disappearance the more unaccountable. Mary Boyne's
experience as the wife of a busy engineer, subject to sudden calls and
compelled to keep irregular hours, had trained her to the philosophic
acceptance of surprises; but since Boyne's withdrawal from business he
had adopted a Benedictine regularity of life. As if to make up for the
dispersed and agitated years, with their "stand-up" lunches and dinners
rattled down to the joltings of the dining-car, he cultivated the last
refinements of punctuality and monotony, discouraging his wife's fancy
for the unexpected; and declaring that to a delicate taste there were
infinite gradations of pleasure in the fixed recurrences of habit.

Still, since no life can completely defend itself from the unforeseen,
it was evident that all Boyne's precautions would sooner or later prove
unavailable, and Mary concluded that he had c