"The right woman!" replied the late First Reserve pensively. "How awful that always sounds! The wrong one is always so much nicer!" "My dear," exclaimed the horrified Lady Adela, "whoever put such a notion into your head?" "Dicky. He told me so himself." "Has Norah Puncheon much influence over him, do you know?" continued Lady Adela, falling back on to safer ground. "Yes, lots," replied Connie, stifling the tiniest of yawns. "There goes your telephone." "Milroy will attend to it, dear. Let me see," pursued Lady Adela, with studious vagueness--"what were we talking about?" "Norah Puncheon’s influence over Dicky," replied Connie, popping a lump of sugar into her mouth and crunching it with all the satisfaction of a child of six. "You have noticed it yourself, then?" Connie, quite speechless, nodded. Lady Adela beamed. The scent was growing stronger. "In what way, dear?" she asked, with unfeigned interest. "Well," said Connie, after an interval of profound reflection, "Dicky wanted to back Prince Caramel for the St. Leger, and Norah would n’t let him. He was so grateful to her afterwards!" Lady Adela summoned up a lopsided smile--the smile of a tarpon-fisher who has pulled up a red herring. "I think her influence goes deeper than that, dearest," she rejoined in patient reproof. "You, who only knew my son as a rather careless and light-hearted boy, would hardly credit--" "A telephone message, my lady!" announced Milroy, appearing at the dining-room door. Lady Adela, tripped up on her way to a striking passage, sighed with an air of pathetic endurance, and enquired:-- "From whom, Milroy?" "From Mr. Richard, my lady." "Mr. Richard? Where is he?" "He has telephoned from Shotley Post-Office, my lady," replied Milroy, keenly appreciating the mild sensation he was about to create; "to say that he has arrived by the four-fifteen and is walking up." "_Walking_--on a night like this?" cried Lady Adela, all the mother in her awake at once. "Tell him to wait, and I will send the motor." "Mr. Richard said he preferred walking, my lady," rejoined Milroy, growing more wooden as he approached the _clou_ of his narrative. "He said he would explain when he arrived. But the luggage-cart was to go down." "For one portmanteau?" "For the young lady’s trunks, my lady." "Young lady?" Lady Adela turned a puzzled countenance to her companion. "Constance, dear, was not your luggage sent up with you?" "Yes," replied Connie, scenting fun; "it was. I fancy this must be some other lady." Light broke in on Lady Adela. "Norah Puncheon, after all!" she exclaimed joyfully. "Her throat must be better, and that headstrong son of mine has compelled her to come down by the four-fifteen." "And walk up in the rain," supplemented Connie. "The thoughtless boy!" wailed Lady Adela insincerely. "He will give her pneumonia." "Perhaps it is n’t Miss Puncheon," suggested Connie soothingly.