"Why should I require preparation?" "The new note!" "Why should the new note require preparation against me?" "I said for you. Possibly we may find out this evening. Besides Delia is in a rest cure as usual. So there is no hostess." Delia was Max Elliot's wife, a graceful nonentity who, having never done a stroke of work in her life, was perpetually breaking down, and being obliged to rest expensively under the supervision of fashionable doctors. She was now in Hampstead, enclosed in a pale green chamber, living on milk and a preparation called "Marella," and enjoying injections of salt water. She was also being massaged perpetually by a stout young woman from Sweden, and was deprived of her letters. "No letters!" was a prescription which had made her physician celebrated. "Oh, the peace of it!" Mrs. Elliot was faintly murmuring to the athletic masseuse, at the very moment when Charmian said: "There very seldom is a hostess. Poor Max Elliot!" "He's accustomed to it. And Delia must be doing something. This time she may be cured. Life originally issued from the sea, they say." "Near Margate, I suppose. What a mystery existence is!" "Are you going to be tiresome to-night?" "No, I won't, I won't. But if he plays his Te Deum I know I shall sleep like a tired child." "I don't suppose he will." "I feel he's going to." "Then why were you so anxious to go?" "I don't like to be left out of things. No one does." "Except the elect. How thoughtful of you to dress in black!" "Well, dearest, you are always in white. And I love to throw up my beautiful mother." Mrs. Mansfield put an arm gently round her as they left the dining-room. "You could make any mother be a sister to you." Just before ten their motor glided up to the Elliots' green door in Cadogan Place. Max Elliot was the very successful senior partner of an old-established stockbroking firm in the City. This was a fact, so people had to accept it. But acceptance was made difficult by his almost strangely unfinancial appearance and manner. Out of the City he never spoke of the City. He was devoted to the arts, and especially to music, of which he had a really considerable knowledge. All prominent musicians knew him. He was the friend of _prime donne_, a pillar of the opera, an ardent frequenter of all the important concerts. Where Threadneedle Street came into his life nobody seemed to know. Nevertheless, his numerous clients trusted him completely as a business man. And more than one singer, whose artistic temperament had brought her--or him, as the case might be--to the door of the poorhouse, had reason to bless Max Elliot's shrewd business head and generous industry in friendship. He had a good heart as well as a fine taste, and his power of criticism had not succeeded in killing his capacity for enthusiasm.