rung, so that Miss
Walbrook found herself sitting in the chair Steptoe had used in the
morning, and listening to her hostess as you listen to people in a
dream.

"Beautiful weather for October, isn't it? Some of these October
days'll be just like summer time. And then again there'll be a nip in
the wind that'll fairly freeze you. A good time of year to get out
your furs, isn't it? and I'm sure I hope the moths ain't--haven't--got
at them. Awfully nasty things moths----"

Letty's further efforts were interrupted by William bearing the tray
as he had borne it in the morning, and in the minutes of silence while
he placed it Miss Walbrook could go through the mental process known
as pulling oneself together.

But she couldn't pull herself together without a sense of outrage. She
had expected to feel shame, vicariously for Rash; she had not expected
to be asked to take part in a horrible bit of play-acting. This
dressing-up; this mock hospitality; this desecration of the things
which "dear Mrs. Allerton" had used; this mingling of ignorance and
pretentiousness, inspired a rage prompting her to fling the back of
her hand at the ridiculous creature's face. She couldn't do that, of
course. She couldn't even express herself as she felt. She had come on
a mission, and she must carry out that mission; and to carry out the
mission she must be as suave as her indignation would allow of. _She_
was morally the mistress of this house. Rash and all Rash owned
belonged to _her_. To see this strumpet sitting in her place....

It did nothing to calm her that while she was pressing Rash's ring
into her flesh, beneath her glove, this vile thing was wearing a plain
gold band, just as if she was married. She could understand that if
they had absurdly walked through an absurd ceremony the absurd
minister who performed it might have insisted on this absurd symbol;
but it should have been snatched from the creature's hand the minute
the business was ended. They owed that to _her_. _Hers_ was the only
claim Rash had to consider, and to allow this farce to be enacted
beneath his roof....

But she remembered that Letty didn't know who she was, or why she had
come, or the degree to which she, Barbara Walbrook, saw through this
foolery.

Letty repeated her little formula: "Lemon?--cream?--one lump?--two
lumps?" though before she reached the end of it her voice began to
fail. Catching the hostility in the other woman's bearing, she felt it
the