"No, I don't think so. But I met him myself once and took rather a fancy to him. No, she just likes him as a friend. It's he who's in love with her." "Under my very eyes," John ejaculated. "Why, it's overwhelming." A sudden thought struck him that even at this moment while he was calmly eating lunch with Miss Merritt, as he somewhat loosely qualified the verb, Hugh might be making love to Miss Hamilton in his own house. "Look here," he cried, "have you nearly finished? Because I've suddenly remembered an important appointment at Hampstead." "I don't want any more," said Miss Merritt, obligingly. "Waiter, the bill! Quick! You don't mind if I rush off and leave you to finish your cheese alone?" His guest shook her head and John hurried out of the restaurant. No taxi he had traveled in had ever seemed so slow, and he kept putting his head out of the window to urge the driver to greater speed, until the man goaded to rudeness by John's exhortations and the trams in Tottenham Court Road asked if his fare thought he was a blinking bullet. "I'm not bullying you. I'm only asking you to drive a little faster," John shouted back. The driver threw his eyes heavenward in a gesture of despair for John's sanity but he was pacified at Church Row by half-a-sovereign and even went so far as to explain that he had not accused John of bullying him, but merely of confusing his capacity for speed with that of a bullet's. John thought he was asking for more money, gave him half-a-crown and waving his arm, half in benediction, half in protest, he hurried into the hall. "They've nearly finished lunch, sir," murmured Maud who was just coming from the dining-room. "Would you like Elsa to hot you up something?" John without a word pounced into the dining-room, where he caught Hugh with a stick of celery half-way to his mouth and Miss Hamilton with a glass of water half-way down from hers in the other direction. "Oh, I'm so sorry we began without you," said the culprits simultaneously. John murmured something about a trying interview with Janet Bond, lit a cigar, realized it was rude to light cigars when people were still eating, threw the cigar away, and sat down with an appearance of exhaustion in one of those dining-room armchairs that stand and wait all their lives to serve a moment like this. "I'm sorry, but I must ask you to go off as soon as you've finished your lunch, Hugh. I've a lot of important business to transact with Miss Hamilton." "Oh, but I've finished already," she exclaimed, jumping up from the table. It was the first pleasant moment in John's day, and he smiled, gratefully. He felt he could even afford to be generous to this intrusive brother, and before he left the room with Miss Hamilton he invited him to have some more celery. "And you'll find a cigar in the sideboard," he added. "But Maud will look after you. Maud, look after Mr. Hugh, please, and if anybody calls this afternoon, I'm not at home." CHAPTER XVI