She had seen a good deal of Digby lately; he knew all about her ambitious schemes and her failure to carry them out, and he was eager to sympathize with her whenever she would allow him; while she accepted his sympathy as one who did not want it particularly, but liked to command it at will. And during the growth of his baby's teeth, which rendered both conversation and work difficult in the flat in Victoria Street, the musician often found his way to Lady Joan's house in Pont Street in the hours that he would otherwise have spent in writing music. It is true that he honestly tried for some time to write classical lullabies to his daughter in the pantry, that being the corner in the flat furthest removed from the nursery, while his wife sang her to sleep in the cradle to the homely ditty of "Hush-a-by-baby," and that he always nursed her when he was asked, and did not swear when he made her cry and was blamed for his clumsiness but after a time he made no objection when his wife sent him round to take her excuses and to dine alone with Lady Joan, until it became no uncommon thing for him to spend his evenings with her, while Norah stayed at home and nursed the baby. They were all three totally regardless of public opinion in the matter, though it might well have come to their ears that Norah was being very generally pitied by the musician's lady friends, not for her loneliness, but for her neglect of the treasure she seemed so unconscious of possessing, and that the musician was allowed to go scathless as he always was, and that Lady Joan was hated without exception. But the musician, who had done what he liked since his infancy, meant to go on doing it now in defiance of all the scandals that were about; and Lady Joan, for her part, always went out of her way to add to them if she could; while Norah only ignored them altogether, and smiled to herself, and so deceived every one who knew her, including her husband. "Yes?" she said to Mrs. Reginald Routh, when that lady remarked one day, during a short call, that Mr. Digby always seemed to be in Pont Street, "it is very unfortunate he should miss you so often; but Joan has wanted him a good deal lately, and I have been only too glad, when baby has been fretful, to send him round to see her. There is such a platonic friendship between them, you know."