I declined, tacitly, to unravel these implications, and on the whole I was relieved when she worked her way back to the Nancy Fazackerly theme once more. Everybody’s inflections, if not their words, were friendly and hopeful when they talked about Nancy Fazackerly and Christopher Ambrey. Almost equally universal were the characteristics of the words and inflections applied to Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch. These were either condemnatory or regretful--and sometimes both. _Chapter Nine_ It was an unusually eventful summer in Cross Loman. The only large house in the neighborhood which is ever let, Grainges, was taken for three months by a wealthy fellow of the name of Leeds and his wife. Lady Annabel Bending was quite excited and said that they had “known H. E. in his Zanzibar days.” It was one of those links of which we had so often heard her speak, and she naturally called upon them at once. Then there was a tea party in their honor at the rectory, and Lady Annabel stood on the steps smiling and said a few appropriate words to each guest as she shook hands and at intervals raised her voice and said very clearly and distinctly: “To your right as you go in. The door is open....” Most of Cross Loman knows the inside of the rectory pretty well, and it is not a very large house, so that Lady Annabel’s directions were not really exactly necessary, but it was all very masterly and well organized, and we went into the drawing-room and avoided the dining room, which was the only other room opening out of the hall. After that, Leeds and Mrs. Leeds were invited to various small social functions, and then, in return, they gave a monster picnic. It was, as entertainments not infrequently are, the occasion for one or two _contretemps_. Mrs. Leeds, a kindly, noisy, unperceiving creature, at the last moment extended an invitation to Mrs. Harter, whom it seemed that they had met in Cairo, when their yacht was coaling at Port Said. I was present at Grainges when Mrs. Leeds announced this to Lady Annabel. “So very amusin’ to meet a well-known face unexpectedly,” she said jovially. “And Mrs. Harter was almost _too_ well-known, in Cairo--ha-ha! Any amount of scandal was talked about her, I believe--so interestin’, scandal, I always think.” Lady Annabel looked pale and said in a very low voice that Mrs. Harter was the daughter of the local plumber, she believed. “Really?” said Mrs. Leeds. “I wish I’d asked her to bring her father--he could have had a look at the range.” We all met at Grainges, from whence a fleet of cars was to carry us to Berry Down. Leeds had two cars and his wife one, and the servants, besides a mountain of hampers, preceded us in a Ford lorry. “It is almost like the East again to see this sort of thing. Native labor, you know....” Lady Annabel murmured to me rather wistfully. However, she ceased to be wistful, and became austere instead, when she heard about Mrs. Harter.