"I have tried deep breathing," said Catherine, "but there really isn't time. You can't do anything else while you are doing it; you can't talk even, because your mouth is closed, and you breathe in through one nostril and breathe out through the other. Perhaps it will be Christian Science, though, do you know, I think some of it is too serious and sensible to be a fad, whereas the other half is too silly. On that side talk to Alice, or read what Mark Twain says. But on the serious side--the side that is sensible--get Maud to tell you about the typhoid up at Achnaleesh and her Mr. Cochrane." "Her Mr. Cochrane?" asked Lady Swindon, with the alertness of the world. But the unconsciousness of the world, no less important an equipment, answered her. "Oh, only 'hers' because she told me about him; no other reason. Thurso and she were up there together." "And Thurso--isn't he here?" "Oh yes," said Catherine, "but tea-time isn't his hour. Tea-time is women's hour; it corresponds to men's after-dinner talk when we have gone upstairs." "But we have women's hour then, too," said Lady Swindon. "I suppose we have got more to say?" Lady Thurso laughed. "Oh, I don't think that," she said. "I think we only take longer to say it. Tea, Theodosia?" Theodosia had truly American ideas about being introduced. It was her custom--and a genial one--to make all her guests formally known to each other by name, and she expected the same formality. "Kindly introduce me, Catherine," she said. "Lady Swindon--my cousin, Mrs. Morton." "Very happy to make your acquaintance, Lady Swindon," said Theodosia; "and don't you think that Catherine's place down here is just the cunningest spot you ever saw? Why, look at that yew-hedge! I guess--expect, I mean--that Noah planted it before the Flood, or, anyhow, soon after, to have made it that height. But, then, all Catherine has is perfect, is it not? I adore her things and her. My! I never saw such a wonderful black pearl as that you've got around your neck. It looks as if it came straight from the Marquis of Anglesea's tie-pin." "I think not; I inherited it," said Lady Swindon rather icily.