It was characteristic of her that even in her excitement she should put it like that instead of saying, as almost everybody else would have said, “What’s he like?” “Reptilian--distinctly reptilian. His eyes were too close together and his nostrils flat and too small. But it wasn’t only that. I should say that in a quiet way he was ruthless--very ruthless. I didn’t like the look of him--and neither did Mrs. Harter for the matter of that. When she saw him she stared at him, and something in the way she did it made me guess who it was--just like that. She never said a word, but after a bit he said: ‘Hallo, Diamond! I thought I’d take you by surprise. We got in to Plymouth this morning.’” “I got up to go, of course, from sheer decency, although I wanted frightfully to sit it out, and I was morally certain that neither of them had given me a thought. But I was wrong. Harter said to her, ‘Who’s your friend, Di? Aren’t you going to introduce me?’” “He thought you were Bill Patch,” said Sallie instantly, and I had a sudden feeling that she was right. “Did she introduce you?” “She said, ‘Mr. Ambrey--my husband, Mr. Harter.’ He didn’t shake hands. And then I _had_ to go.” “Does Bill know?” “Not unless she’s conveyed it to him by telepathy. She said when I was going, ‘Please make my excuses and say I can’t come to the rehearsal, but I’ll turn up to-morrow night all right.’ I bet she will!” “I hope the husband will come, too,” said Sallie, in what I can only call a bloodthirsty way. “Well, there they are, the three of them. I suppose,” Martyn said, “that Patch will rush off, as usual, and go down to Queen Street this evening and there he’ll find Mr. Harter.” “He won’t be as much surprised as you might suppose. Didn’t someone say that Bill and Mrs. Harter had written to him, and asked him to come and see what he thought about it all--something of that sort?” “You’re flippant, Sallie. Mark my words, something or other is going to get smashed.” I listened to these two young people. They certainly seemed to me graceless in their hard, detached appraisement of the affair, but at least their interest was on a higher level than that of Lady Annabel’s low-voiced censoriousness or the frank scandal-mongering of the Kendals. In a very few hours, of course, the Kendals, and Lady Annabel, and everybody else would know that Mrs. Harter’s husband had come to Cross Loman. Bill Patch, in all probability, would know it even sooner. “Martyn, are you going to tell him?” said Sallie. “I suppose so. She told me to make her excuses, as she called it, and that’s a perfectly good excuse, if ever there was one.” Sallie nodded her head, looking very thoughtful. I felt perfectly certain--and the certainty partly amused and partly disgusted me--that whenever Martyn made his announcement Sallie fully intended to be within earshot of it. While they were still talking, Patch himself came up, looking very earnest and very, very young.