Mr. Freddy let himself and Lord Borrodaile in at the front door so closely on the heels of Mrs. Freddy that the servant who had closed the door behind her had not yet vanished into the lower regions. At a word from that functionary, Mr. Freddy left his brother depositing hat and stick with the usual deliberation, and himself ran upstairs two steps at a time. He caught up with his wife just outside the drawing-room door, as she paused to take off her veil in front of that mirror which Mrs. Freddy said should be placed between the front door and the drawing-room in every house in the land for the reassurance of the timid feminine creature. She was known to add privately that it was not ignored by men--and that those who came often, contracted a habit of hurrying upstairs close at the servant's heels, in order to have two seconds to spare for furtive consultation, while he went on to open the drawing-room door. She had observed this pantomime more than once, leaning over the banisters, herself on the way downstairs. 'They tell me Stonor's been here half an hour,' said Mr. Freddy, breathlessly. 'You're dreadfully late!' 'No, darling----' He held out his watch to confound her. 'You tell me you aren't late?' 'Sh--no. I do so sympathize with a girl who has no mother,' with which enigmatic rejoinder she pushed open the door, and went briskly through the double drawing-room to where Mr. Geoffrey Stonor and Jean Dunbarton were sitting by a window that overlooked the square. Stonor waved away Mrs. Freddy's shower of excuses, saying-- 'You've come just in time to save us from falling out. I've been telling Miss Dunbarton that in another age she would have been a sort of Dinah Morris, or more likely another St. Ursula with a train of seven thousand virgins.' 'And all because I've told him about my Girls' Club! and----' 'Yes,' he said, '"and"----' He turned away and shook hands with his two kinsmen. He sat talking to them with his back to the girl. It was a study in those delicate weights and measures that go to estimating the least tangible things in personality, to note how his action seemed not only to dim her vividness but actually to efface the girl. In the first moments she herself accepted it at that. Her looks said: He is not aware of me any more--ergo, I don't exist. During the slight distraction incident to the bringing in of tea, and Mr. Freddy's pushing up some of the big chairs, Mr. Stonor had a moment's remembrance of her. He spoke of his Scottish plans and fell to considering dates. Then all of a sudden she saw that again and yet more woundingly his attention had wandered. The moment came while Lord Borrodaile was busy Russianizing a cup of tea, and Mr. Freddy, balancing himself on very wide-apart legs in front of his wife's tea-table, had interrogated her-- 'What do you think, shall I ring and say we aren't at home?'