Mr. Crocker was about fifty years of age, clean-shaven and of a comfortable stoutness. He was frowning as he read. His smooth, good-humoured face wore an expression which might have been disgust, perplexity, or a blend of both. His wife, on the other hand, was looking happy. She extracted the substance from her correspondence with swift glances of her compelling eyes, just as she would have extracted guilty secrets from Bingley, if he had had any. This was a woman who, like her sister Nesta, had been able all her life to accomplish more with a glance than other women with recrimination and threat. It had been a popular belief among his friends that her late husband, the well-known Pittsburg millionaire G. G. van Brunt, had been in the habit of automatically confessing all if he merely caught the eye of her photograph on his dressing table. From the growing pile of opened envelopes Mrs. Crocker looked up, a smile softening the firm line of her lips. "A card from Lady Corstorphine, Bingley, for her at-home on the twenty-ninth." Mr. Crocker, still absorbed, snorted absently. "One of the most exclusive hostesses in England. . . . She has influence with the right sort of people. Her brother, the Duke of Devizes, is the Premier's oldest friend." "Uh?" "The Duchess of Axminster has written to ask me to look after a stall at her bazaar for the Indigent Daughters of the Clergy." "Huh?" "Bingley! You aren't listening. What is that you are reading?" Mr. Crocker tore himself from the paper. "This? Oh, I was looking at a report of that cricket game you made me go and see yesterday." "Oh? I am glad you have begun to take an interest in cricket. It is simply a social necessity in England. Why you ever made such a fuss about taking it up, I can't think. You used to be so fond of watching baseball and cricket is just the same thing." A close observer would have marked a deepening of the look of pain on Mr. Crocker's face. Women say this sort of thing carelessly, with no wish to wound: but that makes it none the less hard to bear. From the hall outside came faintly the sound of the telephone, then the measured tones of Bayliss answering it. Mr. Crocker returned to his paper. Bayliss entered. "Lady Corstorphine desires to speak to you on the telephone, madam." Half-way to the door Mrs. Crocker paused, as if recalling something that had slipped her memory. "Is Mr. James getting up, Bayliss?" "I believe not, madam. I am informed by one of the house-maids who passed his door a short time back that there were no sounds." Mrs. Crocker left the room. Bayliss, preparing to follow her example, was arrested by an exclamation from the table. "Say!" His master's voice. "Say, Bayliss, come here a minute. Want to ask you something."