“And to do some shopping. Yes, my dear. Yes. You’ve said so many times,” interrupted her husband, rising. “You’d better tell Mark to bring the trap round at half-past two.” The Vicar closed the breakfast-room door with a slightly firm touch. “Is mamma going to London to-day?” shouted Johnny, who regardless of lesson books, was sliding down the banisters outside. “I believe so. I trust it may do her good,” answered his father piously. “Go upstairs, at once, and get ready for Miss Hope.” He entered his study, and with some disinclination, sat down to the sermon for which a more deferential hearing might possibly be anticipated than that accorded in the home circle. * * * * * Mrs. Carfax arrived at Rushworth Terrace just in time to dress for dinner. Madame Didier, to whom she was presented in the drawing-room just before the gong sounded, was a tall young woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with a sharp face and a thin pointed nose. Her fair hair was arranged neatly over her forehead, and her dress, though fashionable, was undistinguished. “Helen doesn’t look a bit French, does she?” asked her aunt. Mrs. Lovell was a fat comfortable woman with no figure, and less intelligence. “I’m glad she’s kept so English. One would have thought that living in Paris so long would have made a Frenchwoman of her.” “We should quarrel if it had!” declared the Major in a loud voice. “I don’t like foreigners. Can’t stand ’em. Beg your pardon, my dear. I forgot your husband!” He laughed heartily. “But you must excuse me. I’ve never seen him, and I dare say you’ve made an Englishman of him. Hope so, I’m sure.” “Oh, nothing would make an Englishman of Louis, I’m sorry to say,” answered Madame Didier. “He can’t bear England. We’re always fighting about it.” “Well, come along! Dinner. Dinner. I’m famished,” declared the Major. “Come along, Mrs. Carfax. How’s your husband? And the children? All well, eh? That’s right.” “I’m so interested to hear that you know a neighbour of ours,” began Mrs. Carfax during the first favourable opportunity at dinner-time. “Oh! Madge Dakin? Yes. Aunt Laura has been telling me that you are neighbours. She has been staying with us in Paris, as of course you know.” “Yes. I’m so sorry to hear she is ill.” Mrs. Carfax helped herself to bread sauce, and waited in suspense. “Madge is never quite so ill as she thinks she is,” replied Madame Didier in her decisive voice. “It’s all a question of nerves with her. However, I suggested she should go to a doctor who did me a great deal of good some time ago. I’m a _real_ sufferer from nerves. And as I couldn’t keep her any longer--I had visits to pay and so on,--she is boarding with some people in Paris to go on with the treatment.” The explanation, delivered in Madame Didier’s high thin voice, seemed sufficiently reasonable. Yet Mrs. Carfax was conscious of an under-current.