But this was plainly impossible. He smiled to himself at the bare idea, striding along oblivious of the heavy thunder drops that fell. At last a scheme presented itself. When he reached the Underground, after a moment's hesitation, he took a ticket for Kensington and, in due course, with two changes, alighted at the High Street station. Here, with an anxious glance at the clock, he turned to the left and, winding about, arrived at last at a large block of flats in a quiet street. He studied the list of names in the hall, entered the lift and was carried up to the fourth floor and Flat G, where he rang the bell, feeling a shade nervous. Miss Elizabeth Uniacke was "at home." He handed the maid his card--a neat elderly woman in an old-fashioned cap and apron--and followed her into a small drawing-room, crowded with little tables and chairs and occupied by a large black cat, asleep on a cushion, and a grey parrot. The door closed and he looked around him. Early Victorian furniture, bright chintzes, modern china, photo frames, frilled cushions and a quantity of Benares work. Over the draped chimney-piece a rosewood overmantel obtruded with carved cubicles, enclosing each a simpering statuette. The walls, buff with knots of roses, were dotted with plates, plush brackets and amateurish water colours, but the room was airy and spotlessly clean, with a certain homelike sense of comfort. The parrot eyed him wickedly, his grey head on one side, and the black cat yawned in his face, red tongue curled, with sleepy disdain. McTaggart's nervousness increased. Then he heard a brisk step, the door opened and in there came a trim, upright little figure in a blue "foulard" dress. He gathered his wits and advanced to meet her. "I'm afraid you won't remember me--I must really apologize for coming..." "Oh, yes, I do----" she cut him short--"_quite_ well"--and held out her hand. "I met you at my sister-in-law's--Won't you sit down?" He found himself on the chintz-covered sofa facing his hostess. Clear eyes, grey like Jill's, met his gaze, beneath a fringe, plainly false, of a brownish hue, safely secured by a band of black velvet. Beyond this line her natural hair, pepper and salt, seemed to proclaim, with emphasis, the honesty of the subterfuge and her intentions. Her nose was sharp, her lips tight, her figure angular and spare, but he noticed she had beautiful hands on which gleamed some fine old rings. "I was staying there when you lunched one day and took the children for a drive." She seemed to guess that he was nervous and set him at ease with well-bred tact. "It's really about your niece I've called--I hope you will forgive the intrusion." He hesitated, finding it harder even than he had guessed it would be. "Mrs. Uniacke's frightfully ill--but, of course, you know all about it?"