"Well, we’ll consider it arranged then. Stannard will see to the contract. The tour is for three months. I leave town in about a fortnight, but you might as well come and stop here in the meantime. We shall get to know each other and rub corners off. Would you care to? Then come back to-night, somewhere about six. You can help me with my shopping and packing. I’ll keep you busy!" She held out a thin artistic hand. There was no maid in the hall, so Alexandra opened the door to let herself out. A man stood on the steps, about to ring the bell. He was thirty or so, of an aristocratic type. They both hesitated for a moment. Then he asked: "Can you tell me if Mrs. Lambert is in?" "Yes—I think so," she said. "Would you mind telling her I’d like to take her to lunch. I’ll wait if she isn’t down yet." "Yes, certainly," said Alexandra. It struck her that he seemed to be aware of the late hours she kept. It argued intimacy. "What name shall I say?" "Oh—Chalfont." She went upstairs again, knocked at the door, and found Mrs. Lambert with the morning’s papers on the bed. She was reading of her husband’s projected departure for America with his successful repertoire. There were tears in her eyes. "I shall have to take to glasses," she said, looking up. "I can’t read without weeping. What is it?" "Mr. Chalfont is downstairs. He wants to know if you will lunch with him." "Please tell Lord Chalfont," said Mrs. Lambert in a low voice, "that it’s the anniversary of my separation from my husband, and that I’m lunching on my heart. But he can come to dinner to-night if he likes. Ask him to put you in a taxi." She returned to the newspapers. XV "Lexie’s coming to lunch to-morrow," Maggy informed Woolf. "We must give her a good one, Fred, and you’ll behave, won’t you, D.D.?" "D.D." in Maggy’s language of love stood for Dearest Darling. She was not free from the modern, time-saving habit, set by trade advertisements and the halfpenny papers, of abbreviating words in common use down to their lowest denomination. "So she’s woken up to the fact that there may be something to be got out of you," yawned Woolf. "I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, Fred. Lexie couldn’t be on the make-haste. She’s not made that way." "Sounds as if she’s too good and uninteresting to live." "She isn’t uninteresting. You’ll like her. She’s very pretty. Do be good and do me credit." "Well ... I like that!" Woolf stared at her, half-amused. "I mean, don’t say the things you say to me. She’s sensitive." "My dear girl, don’t teach me how to talk to women. Judging by what you’ve told me I’m inclined to think your copybook Lexie is a deep ’un. I don’t think I’ll come, anyway." "Oh, but you must. I’ve asked her on purpose to meet you. I want her to see what a duck you are, and to like you, and not to think me bad just because I let you wipe your shoes on me."