"Miss Merritt," the old lady asserted, "was meant for bookkeeping by double-entry, instead of which she had taken to book-writing by double-entente. The profits may be treble, but the method is base. How did she affect you, Mr. Touchwood?" "She frightened me," John confessed. "I thought her manner somewhat severe." "You hear that, Doris? Her ethical exterior frightened him." "You're both very unfair to Ida. I only wish I had half her talents." "Wrapped in a napkin," said the old lady, "you have your shorthand." John's heart leapt. "Ah, you know shorthand," he could not help ejaculating with manifest pleasure. "I studied for a time. I think I had vague ideas once of a commercial career," she replied, indifferently. "The suggestion being," Mrs. Hamilton put in, "that I discouraged her. But how is one to encourage shorthand? If she had learnt the deaf and dumb alphabet I might have put aside half-an-hour every day for conversation. But it is as hard to encourage shorthand as to encourage a person who is talking in his sleep." John fancied that beneath the indifference of the daughter and the self-conscious humor of the mother he could detect cross-currents of mutual disapproval; he could have sworn that the daughter was beginning to be perpetually aware of her mother's presence. "Or is it due to my obsession that relations should never see too much of each other?" he asked himself. "Yet she knows shorthand--an extraordinary coincidence. What a delightful house you have," he said aloud with as much fervor as would excuse the momentary abstraction into which he had been cast. "My husband was a sinologue," Mrs. Hamilton announced. "Was he indeed?" said John, trying to focus the word. "And the study of Chinese is nearly as exclusive as shorthand," the old lady went on. "But we traveled a great deal in China when I was first married and being upon our honeymoon had but slight need of general conversation." No wonder she looked like a mandarin. "And to me their furniture was always more expressive than their language. Hence this house." Her black eyebrows soared like a condor to disappear in the clouds of her snowy hair. "But do not let us talk of China," she continued. "Let us rather talk of the drama. Or will you have another muffin?" "I think I should prefer the muffin," John admitted. Presently he noticed that Miss Hamilton was looking surreptitiously at her watch and glancing anxiously at the deepening twilight; she evidently had an appointment elsewhere, and he rose to make his farewells. "For I'm sure you're wanting to go out," he ventured. "Doris never cares to stay at home for very long," said her mother; and John was aware once again, this time unmistakably, of the cross-currents of mutual discontent. "I had promised to meet Ida in Sloane Square."