“Do try to find time to oblige me sometimes. I don’t think you know how much work you make for me, especially when you find some eccentric way of insulting everybody at once.” “What do you mean, Gertrude?” The maid had left the room, and Gertrude Canterton half turned in her chair. Her shoulders were wriggling, and she kept fidgeting with her pen, rolling it to and fro between her thumb and forefinger. “Can’t you imagine what people say when you put up wire fences, and have the gates locked on the day of our garden party?” “Do you think that Whiteley would hold a party in his business premises?” “Oh, don’t be so absurd! I wonder why people come here.” “I really don’t know. Certainly not to look at the flowers.” “Then why be so eccentrically offensive?” “Because there are always a certain number of enthusiastic ladies who like to get something for nothing. I believe it is a feminine characteristic.” Mrs. Grigg Batsby came sailing into the room, gracious as a great galleon freighted with the riches of Peru. She was an extremely wealthy person, and her consciousness of wealth shone like a golden lustre, a holy effulgence that penetrated into every corner. Her money had made her important, and filled her with a sort of after-dinner self-satisfaction. She issued commands with playful regality, ordered the clergy hither and thither, and had a half humorous and half stately way of referring to any male thing as “It.” “My dear Mrs. Batsby, I have just asked James to take you round this morning.” The lady rustled and beamed. “And is ‘It’ agreeable? I have always heard that ‘Its’ time is so precious.” “James will be delighted.” “Obliging thing.” Canterton was reserved and a little stiff. “I shall be ready at eleven. I can give you an hour, Mrs. Batsby.” “‘It’ is really a humorist, Mrs. Canterton. That barbed wire! I don’t think I ever came across anything so delightfully original.” Gertrude frowned and screwed her shoulders. “I cannot see the humour.” “But I think Mrs. Batsby does. I have a good many original plants on my premises.” “Oh, you wicked, witty thing! And original sin?” “Yes, it is still rather prevalent.” There was no queen’s progress through the Fernhill grounds for Mrs. Grigg Batsby that morning, for by ten o’clock her very existence had been forgotten, and she was left reading the _Athenæum_, and wondering, with hauteur, what had become of the treacherous “It.” Women like Mrs. Grigg Batsby have a way of exacting as a right what the average man would not presume to ask as a favour. That they should happen to notice anything is in itself a sufficient honour conferred upon the recipient, who becomes a debtor to them in service. Canterton had drifted in search of Eve, had failed to find her, and was posing himself with various questions, when one of the under-gardeners brought him a letter. It had taken the man twenty minutes of hide and seek to trace Canterton’s restless wanderings.