pardon, Mrs. Paliser. The car is at the door."

Cassy half turned. "What?"

Emma reconstructed it. "Whenever you are ready, mem, the car will be
waiting."

Cassy turned away. "That will do."

"Thank you, mem."

With that air which servants assume, Emma pursed her lips, reopened
them, thought better of it, closed them and closed too the door.

Facing it still, Cassy sat in the brocaded chair. Anger had shaken her
and gone, taking with it its spawn which hatred is. What inhabited her
then was disgust.

I am in a nice mess, she told herself. But she told it without surprise,
as though all along it was something which she might have known, could
have avoided, but into which she had put her foot. A momentary vision of
the red-crossed Lady Bountiful returned and she even smiled at it. It
was a sad little smile though.

Abstractedly, she had been turning and twisting the rings. The motion
aroused her. It drew her attention to them. They also had something to
say. Something which they had been saying ever since the smoke curled
from the pipe. She had not heard it then. There had been too many things
tumbling about her. But now she did hear. She took them off, stood up
and dropped them on the table where they fell between gold-backed
brushes and a vase, gorgeous in delicacy, the colour of ox-blood.

From a cupboard she took the rowdy frock, the tam, the basilica
underwear and, for a moment, searched and searched vainly for a pair of
stockings. In hunting for them she unearthed the bundle, and that
together with the other things, she threw on the bed, which was not
brocaded, or even daised. It was silver. A few days before, when she had
first seen it, she had clapped her hands. The vase too she had
applauded. Now the lovely room, that had seemed so lovely, a curl of
smoke had turned into a lupanar.

Quickly, one after another, the modish hat, the delicious frock, the
things that could be drawn through a ring, were removed and replaced. In
the mirror she looked, stopped, looked again, adjusted the tam and was
going to the bed for the bundle when she heard a horn. Head-drawn, she
listened.

She would have so much preferred to leave without seeing him or speaking
to him. If she could, she would have gone without a word, silently, in
the only dignified manner that was possible. But, apparently, matters
had arranged themselves otherwise. She went to the bed, took the bundle,
moved back to the table and waited.

She di