The knowledge, the increasing certainty that there was something in it all, was choking her so that she found it exceedingly difficult to eat. But that she should be baffled by James was so incredible an idea that she concealed her rising temper. She nodded gaily at Mrs. Lawrence, who swam towards their table with outstretched hands and a blue scarf floating like wings behind her. “My dear!” “My dear!” “But you generally have it upstairs, I thought . . .” “Yes, I know; but _such_ a day, one couldn’t really . . .” “Yes, I was awake ever so . . . But James has been bathing. No, Lucy, sit still, dear, until we’ve finished. Bathing before breakfast. I think I really must to-morrow.” Epsom closed about the table. She was extremely nice to him throughout the meal, and even hinted at their doing something, spending the day, “and _such_ a day.” It was a shame not to take advantage of the weather “as a family.” Quite a new idea, indeed, but he accepted it, and even began to suggest possible places. She was baffled again, and, as the terrible prospect of a whole day spent in James’s company, quite alone except for the girls, pressed about her, became almost hysterical in her hurriedly discovered reasons why, after all, it would never do. But he smiled at her, and although he was quite ready to do anything that she might suggest, it was a different kind of agreeing from a week or two ago. She retired from the breakfast-table baffled. He had been watching the door of the breakfast-room eagerly, and when he went out down into the garden he was still looking for the same figure. There was no longer, there could be no longer any disguise about the person, it was Mrs. Lester beyond any possible question; but he _did_ disguise the reason. He wanted to talk to her, he liked to talk to her, just as he liked to talk to any understanding person, quite irrespective of sex. She had, of course, her atmosphere; it had a great deal in common with the place and the weather and the amazing riot of colour that the weather had brought. He saw her always as she had been on that first day, primrose, golden, in that dark dim drawing-room; but that he should think of her in that way didn’t show him, as it should have done, how the case was really beginning to lie. He had the “Play-boy” on his knee and the light swung, as some great golden censor is swung before the High Altar, in waves of scent and colour backwards and forwards before him. He watched, looking eagerly down the sunlit path, but she did not come, and the morning passed in its golden silence and he was still alone. It wasn’t indeed until after lunch that things began to move again, and then Tony came to him. He was in a glow of pleasure and excitement; she had written to him.