She looked up at him and smiled. “You’re looking very cool and very cross,” she said, “and both are irritating to people on a hot day. Oh! the heat!” She waved her carnation in the air. “You know, if I had my way I should like to be wheeled about in a chair carved out of ice and sprayed by cool negroes with iced rose water! There! Isn’t that Théophile Gautier and Théodore de Banville and the rest? Oh dear! what rot I’m talking; I’m——” “I wish,” he said, looking her all over very slowly, “that you’d be yourself, Mrs. Lester, just for a little. I hate all that stuff; you know you’re not a bit like that really. I want you as you are, not a kind of afternoon-tea dummy!” “But I am like that,” she said, laughing lightly, but also a little nervously. “I’m always like that in hot weather and at Treliss. We’re all like that just now, on the jump. There’s Lady Gale and Sir Richard and Alice Du Cane, and Rupert too, if he wasn’t too selfish, all worrying their eyes out about Tony, and there’s Tony worrying his eyes out about some person or persons unknown, and there’s my husband worrying his eyes out about his next masterpiece, and there’s you worrying your eyes out about——” She paused. “Yes,” said Maradick, “about?” “Oh! I don’t know—something. It was easy enough to see as one came along. I asked Alice Du Cane; she didn’t know. What was she talking to you for?” “Why shouldn’t she?” “Oh! I don’t know; only she’s on the jump like the rest of us and hasn’t honoured anyone with her conversation very much lately. The place has got hold of you. That’s what it is. What did I tell you? Treliss is full of witches and devils, you know, and they like playing tricks with people like yourself, incredulous people who like heaps of eggs and bacon for breakfast and put half a crown in the plate on Sundays. I know.” He didn’t say anything, so she went on: “But I suppose Alice wanted to know what Tony was doing. That’s what they all want to know, and the cat will be out of the bag very soon. For my part, I think we’d all better go away and try somewhere else. This place has upset us.” Suddenly her voice dropped and she leant forward and put her hand for a moment on his knee. “But please, Mr. Maradick—we’re friends—we made a compact the other day, that, while we were here, you know, we’d be of use to each other; and now you must let me be of use, please.” That had never failed of its effect, that sudden passing from gay to grave, the little emotional quiver in the voice, the gentle touch of the hand; but now she was serious about it, it was, for once, uncalculated. And it had its effect on him. A quiver passed through his body at her touch; he clenched his hands.