As Lord John moved towards the window the vermilion disk of the umbrella closed and dropped like a poppy before it blooms. As the owner of it entered the hall, Greatorex followed in her wake, calling out-- 'Bless my soul! what can a woman like you _know_ about such a thing?' 'Little enough,' said Miss Levering, smiling and scattering good-mornings. 'I should think so indeed!' He breathed a sigh of relief and recovered his waggishness. 'It's all this fellow Farnborough's wicked jealousy--routing us out of the summer-house where we were sitting, _perfectly_ happy--weren't we?' 'Ideally,' said the lady. 'There. You hear!' He interrupted Lord John's inquiry as to the seriousness of Miss Levering's unpopular and mysterious programme for the afternoon. But the lady quietly confirmed it, and looked over her hostess's shoulder at the plan-sheet that Lady John was silently holding out between two extended hands. 'Haled indoors on a day like this'--Greatorex affected a mighty scorn of the document--'to talk about--Public Sanitation, forsooth! Why, God bless my soul, do you realize that's _drains_!' 'I'm dreadfully afraid it is,' said Miss Levering, smiling down at the architectural drawing. 'And we in the act of discussing Italian literature!' Greatorex held out the little book with an air of comic despair. 'Perhaps you'll tell me that isn't a more savoury topic for a lady.' 'But for the tramp population less conducive to savouriness--don't you think--than baths?' She took the book from him, shutting her handkerchief in the place where his finger had been. 'No, no'--Greatorex, Panama in hand, was shaking his piebald head--'I can't understand this morbid interest in vagrants. You're too--much too---- Leave it to others!' 'What others?' 'Oh, the sort of woman who smells of india-rubber,' he said, with smiling impertinence. 'The typical English spinster. You've seen her. Italy's full of her. She never goes anywhere without a mackintosh and a collapsible bath--_rubber_. When you look at her it's borne in upon you that she doesn't only smell of rubber. She is rubber, too.' They all laughed. 'Now you frivolous people go away,' Lady John said. 'We've only got a few minutes to talk over the terms of the late Mr. Barlow's munificence before the carriage comes for Miss Levering.' In the midst of the general movement to the garden, Mrs. Freddy asked Farnborough did he know she'd got that old horror to give Lady John L8000 for her charity before he died? 'Who got him to?' demanded Greatorex. 'Miss Levering,' answered Lady John. 'He wouldn't do it for me, but she brought him round.' 'Bah-ee Jove!' said Freddy. 'I expect so.' 'Yes.' Mrs. Freddy beamed in turn at her lord and at Farnborough as she strolled with them through the window. '_Isn't_ she wonderful?' 'Too wonderful,' said Greatorex to the lady in question, lowering his voice, 'to waste your time on the wrong people.'