This was disagreeably borne in upon him that first Saturday after Lucia's arrival, when he and Flossie were in the train going down to Ealing. The compartment was packed with City men (how he wished Flossie would turn her head and not her eyes if she must look at them!); and as they got in at Earl's Court, one of them, a polite person, gave up his seat to the lady. Flossie turned an unseeing eye on the polite person, and took his seat with a superb pretence of having found it herself after much search. And when Rickman said "Thanks" to the polite person her indignant glance informed him that she had expected support in her policy of repudiation. "My dear Beaver," he said as he helped her on to the platform at Ealing, "when you take another person's seat the least you can do is to say Thank you." "I _never_ speak to gentlemen in trains and buses. That's the way they always begin." "Good Heavens, the poor man was only being civil." "Thank you. I've gone about enough to know what 'is kind of civility means. I wasn't going to lay myself open to impertinence." "I should have thought you'd gone about enough to know the difference." Flossie said nothing. She was furious with him for his failure to defend her from the insulting advances of the City gentleman. But perhaps she would hardly have taken it so seriously, if it had not been significant to her of a still more intolerable desertion. Ada Bishop had said something to her just before they started, something that had been almost too much even for Flossie's complacency. "I'm glad," she still heard Ada saying, "you're going to take him out all day. If I were you I shouldn't let him see too much of that Miss Harden." There hadn't been much to take hold of in Ada's words, but Ada's manner had made them unmistakable; and from that moment a little worm had begun to gnaw at Flossie's heart.