ilda," he called out to his wife, "her ladyship takes a bath?"

"I should hardly like to say, Hugh," Mrs. Elliot tittered, "but wearing
puce velvet, as she does even on the hottest August day, it somehow
doesn't show."

"Pepper, you have me," said Mr. Elliot. "My chess is even worse than I
remembered." He accepted his defeat with great equanimity, because he
really wished to talk.

He drew his chair beside Mr. Wilfrid Flushing, the newcomer.

"Are these at all in your line?" he asked, pointing at a case in front
of them, where highly polished crosses, jewels, and bits of embroidery,
the work of the natives, were displayed to tempt visitors.

"Shams, all of them," said Mr. Flushing briefly. "This rug, now, isn't
at all bad." He stopped and picked up a piece of the rug at their feet.
"Not old, of course, but the design is quite in the right tradition.
Alice, lend me your brooch. See the difference between the old work and
the new."

A lady, who was reading with great concentration, unfastened her brooch
and gave it to her husband without looking at him or acknowledging the
tentative bow which Mr. Elliot was desirous of giving her. If she
had listened, she might have been amused by the reference to old Lady
Barborough, her great-aunt, but, oblivious of her surroundings, she went
on reading.

The clock, which had been wheezing for some minutes like an old man
preparing to cough, now struck nine. The sound slightly disturbed
certain somnolent merchants, government officials, and men of
independent means who were lying back in their chairs, chatting,
smoking, ruminating about their affairs, with their eyes half shut;
they raised their lids for an instant at the sound and then closed them
again. They had the appearance of crocodiles so fully gorged by their
last meal that the future of the world gives them no anxiety whatever.
The only disturbance in the placid bright room was caused by a large
moth which shot from light to light, whizzing over elaborate heads of
hair, and causing several young women to raise their hands nervously and
exclaim, "Some one ought to kill it!"

Absorbed in their own thoughts, Hewet and Hirst had not spoken for a
long time.

When the clock struck, Hirst said:

"Ah, the creatures begin to stir. . . ." He watched them raise
themselves, look about them, and settle down again. "What I abhor most
of all," he concluded, "is the female breast. Imagine being Venning and
having to get into bed w