“I’ve something to tell her,” said Lalage; “something that I simply must tell to somebody.” “I shall be delighted to listen.” Lalage hesitated. She was drumming with her fingers on the edge of an empty flower pot as if she were playing a very rapid fantasia on the piano. This seemed to me a further symptom of nerve storm. I encouraged her to speak, as tactfully as I could. “Has Miss Battersby,” I asked, “rebelled against her destiny?” Lalage’s face suddenly puckered up in a very curious way. I should have supposed that she was on the verge of tears if there existed any record of her ever having shed tears. But no one, not even her most intimate friend ever heard of her crying; so I came to the conclusion that she wanted to laugh. I felt uneasy, for Lalage usually laughs without any preliminary puckerings of her face. “Perhaps,” I said, “you’re thinking of the Archdeacon.” “I am,” said Lalage. She spoke with a kind of gulp which in the case of Hilda would certainly have been a premonitory symptom of tears. “Did he make himself particularly disagreeable?” Greatly to my relief Lalage laughed. It was an excited, unnatural laugh; and it was not very far from crying. Still it was a laugh. “No,” she said. “He made himself particularly agreeable, too agreeable; at least he tried to.” Then she laughed again and this time the laughing did her good. She became calmer and sat down on the edge of an iron water tank which stood in the corner of the greenhouse. I warned her of the danger of falling in backward. I also offered her one of my cushions to put on the edge of the tank, which looked to me hard. She laughed in reply. My cigarette case was, very fortunately, in my pocket. I fished it out and asked her if she would like to smoke. She took a cigarette and lit it. I could see that it helped to calm her still further. “Go on with your story,” I said. “Where was I?” She spoke quite naturally. The laughter and the cigarette, between them, had saved her from the attack which for some time was threatening. “You hadn’t actually begun,” I said. “You had only mentioned that the Archdeacon was, or tried to be, unusually, even excessively, agreeable.” “He was writing letters in his study,” said Lalage, “when I knocked at the door and walked in on him. I apologized at once for interrupting him.” “You were quite right to do that.” “He said he didn’t mind a bit; in fact, liked it. Then he looked like a sheep. You know the sort of way a sheep looks?” “Woolly?” “Yes, frightfully, and worse. If I’d had a single grain of sense I should have bolted at once. Anybody might have known what was coming.” “I shouldn’t. In fact, even now that I know something came, I can’t guess what it was.” “Instead of bolting I brought out that text of Selby-Harrison’s. He took it like a lamb.” “Woolly again, only a softer kind of wool.” “No,” said Lalage, “just meekly; though of course he went on being woolly.”