"You're not a bit busy. But I'll go." And she went with hardly a perceptible hang-back at the door. Upstairs she rejected her usual choice with a curled lip. "No, no, too stuffy." "Oh, Smithers, I couldn't. It makes me look a hundred." No doubt she was absurd; but she had been starved. Such a thing as this had not happened to her since her days of betrothal, and then but seldom. When she had satisfied herself she had a panic. Suppose he said, "Comic Opera!" He said nothing at all. He was in a thoughtful mood, and talked mostly of Urquhart's proposal for Whitsuntide. "I believe it's rather remarkable. Quite a place to be seen. Jimmy does things well, you know. He's really a rich man." "As rich as you?" Lucy asked, not at all interested in Urquhart just now. The eyeglass was pained. "My dear soul! You don't know what you're saying!" She quizzed him with a saucy look. "I didn't say anything, dear. I asked something." If eyeglasses shiver, so did James's. "Well, well--you quibble. I dare say Urquhart has fifteen thousand a year, and even you will know that I haven't half as much." She quenched her eyes, and looked meek. "No, dear, I know. All right, he's quite rich. Now what does he do with it?" "Do with it?" James tilted his head and scratched his neck vigorously, but not elegantly. "Very often nothing at all. There will be years when he won't spend a hundred above his running expenses. Then he'll get a kind of maggot in the brain, and squander every sixpence he can lay hands on. Or he may see reason good, and drop ten thousand in a lap like Lingen's. Why does he do it? God knows, Who made him. He's made like that." Lucy said it was very interesting, but only because she thought James would be pleased. Then she remembered, with a pang of doubt, that she was to be driven by this wild man to-morrow. But James--would he--? He had never been really jealous, and just now she didn't suppose he could possibly be so; but you can't tell with men. So she said, "James dear," very softly, and he looked over the table at her. "If you don't think it--sensible, I could easily telephone." "Eh? What about?--to whom?--how? I don't follow you." "I mean to Mr. Urquhart, about his motor to-morrow. I don't care about it in the least. In fact--" "Oh," said James, "the motor? Ah, I had forgotten. Oh, I think you might go. Urquhart's been very reasonable about this business of Lingen's. I had a little trouble, of course--it's a lot of money, even for him. Oh, yes, I should go if I were you. Why, he might want _me_ to go, you know--which would bore me to extinction. But I know you like that sort of thing." He nodded at her. "Yes, I should go." She pouted, and showed storm in her eyes--all for his benefit. But he declined benefit. A strange, dear, bleak soul.