"That's Walter Wyron. That's Mrs. Wyron. That's Miss Lemesurier. I don't know who the little man is. That's Mr. Wilkinson. My name's Belchamber." "Oh--I say--I mean, thanks awfully. We've heard of them all, of course," the unhappy young man faltered. "What?" "All distinguished names, I mean." "Of course." "Rather!----" And again everybody listened, became conscious of the fact, and broke out anew. But where all this time was Amory? Demonstrably, exactly where she ought to have been--in her bedroom. She was too dispirited to be accessible to the rational talk of others; she did not feel that she had energy enough to be a source of illumination herself; surely, then, merely because a lot of people, invited and uninvited, chose to come to The Witan, she need not put herself out to go and look after them. They might call themselves her "guests" if they liked; Amory didn't care what form of words they employed; the underlying reality remained--that she was intensely bored, and too fundamentally polite to bore others by going down. Perhaps she would go down when Edgar came. She had left word that she was to be informed of his arrival. But he was very late. Nevertheless, she knew that he would come. Lately she had grown a little more perspicacious about that. It had dawned on her that, everything else apart, she had some sort of hold on him through the "Novum," and there had been a trace of command in her summons that he was pretty sure not to disregard. No doubt he would try to get away again almost directly, but she had arranged about that. She intended to keep him to supper. Also the Wyrons. And Britomart Belchamber too would be there. And of course Cosimo. She moved restlessly between her narrow bed and the window, now polishing her nails, now glancing at her hair in the glass. From the window she could see over the privet hedge and down the road, but there was no sign of Edgar yet. She looked at herself again in the glass, without favour, and then sat down on the edge of her bed again. Her meeting with Lady Tasker the week before had greatly unsettled her. Very stupidly, she had quite forgotten that Lady Tasker lived in Cromwell Gardens. She would have thought nothing at all of the meeting had Lady Tasker had a hat on her head and gloves on her hands; she would have set that down as an ordinary street-encounter; but Dorothy's aunt had evidently seen her from some window, perhaps not for the first time, and, if not for the first, very likely for the third or fourth or fifth. In a word, Amory felt that she had been caught. And, as she had been thinking of Edgar Strong at the moment when the old lady's voice had startled her so, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that her start had seemed remarkable. Lady Tasker was so very sharp. At all events, even Edgar was not going to have everything all his own way.