“My dear! What an extraordinary notion! Isn’t darling Maria’s brain original, Annie? Nancy is almost engaged to Mr. Minns, the Liddleshorn curate. He is an extremely intellectual young man. Naturally he was drawn to Nancy, whose tastes are so literary.” Pamela was slowly driving up the hill in her governess car. She was startled by a sharp voice behind. It took little to startle her. Her gray eyes had lately a vague, fixed look--they seemed to petrify as the wedding-day grew near--a day not to be evaded. “I thought that I should never make you hear.” Mrs. Clutton put one hand on the cart and the other to her pulsing brown throat. “I’m sorry. Jump in. Are you going to the Mount?” “Not I. My reception wouldn’t be warm.” She laughed merrily. “You must have heard the scandal.” “What scandal?” Pamela’s high voice seemed to whistle through her teeth; the reins dropped slackly on Betsy’s back. “About my husband, of course. He came home quite unexpectedly last night; came just as he was from his club, where he is putting up until we settle. I opened the door myself; Tryphena was in bed. He looked so big and brown and self-assured--so prosperous--nothing of the flabby, dubious, hard-up artist about him. He ate cold pork for supper, and slept all night. No more dyspepsia, no more rows! He is a success--a decent income assured us for life. He climbed some peak in America that no one else has ever climbed. His book will be the sensation of the season.” She stopped, her black eyes snapping and gleaming. “I’m very glad,” Pamela said, with a kind of sad heartiness. “Very glad that someone is going to be happy.” “Someone else, you mean. Your happiness is beyond question, though happiness is only attitude. What alterations Mr. Jayne is making at Folly Corner!” “We couldn’t do without a new wing. A country house isn’t complete without a billiard-room,” Pamela said, with her limp, forced air of breeding, of doing the “correct thing.” “And your brother will be bringing men down, week ends, no doubt.” “Edred!” She caught the reins up tightly. “He will not come again.” Mrs. Clutton looked at her shrewdly. Then she said: “Tim and I are to live at Chelsea; one of those delightful new houses, all white paint and wrought iron. He has gone back to town. He is much too busy to stay. I am making all arrangements for leaving the Buttery at the end of the week. He was so delighted with the oak. When I showed him my notebook, full of rustic skeletons, he fairly shouted. It will make a most sensational thing to run in an up-to-date paper: daily installments, skillfully backed up by interviews, paragraphs, photographs of the Chelsea house, when we are settled.” “There is nothing scandalous in all this.”