'She lives in a wild part of Wales,' Sibyl answered, smiling tolerantly. 'And her husband detests society.' 'Indeed? Odd choice for her to have made, don't you think?--And so your Odyssey is over? We shall have some chance of seeing you again.' 'But your own Odyssey is perpetually going on. Are you ever in town except for a few weeks of the season?' 'Oh, I go about very little now; I'm settling down.--You never met my sister, I think? She has a house at Wimbledon with a good-sized garden--sort of little park, in fact,--and I have persuaded her to let me build myself a bungalow among the trees.' 'Splendid idea!' 'Not bad, I think. One is free there; a member of the family whenever one likes; domesticated; all that's respectable; and only a few steps away, the bachelor snuggery, with all that's----. No, no! I was _not_ going to complete the antithesis, though by your smiling you seem to say so.' 'The suggestion was irresistible,' said Sibyl, with the composure, the air of security, which always covered her excursions on to slippery ground. 'When the weather is good, I ask a few of my friends to come and sit there in the shade. They may or may not be my sister's friends also; that doesn't matter. I have a separate entrance from the road.--But I wish you knew Mrs. Fenimore. She lived a year or two at Stuttgart, for her children to learn German. Her husband's in India. She tried it, but couldn't stand the climate.' 'And you really live in the bungalow?' inquired Mrs. Carnaby, disregarding this information about Redgrave's sister. 'Yes, it's my headquarters in England. Let me send you a card, will you, when I have my next afternoon? It might amuse you, and I assure you it _is_ perfectly respectable.' 'How could I doubt it, if you invite me?' Alma drove home by herself in a hansom. She liked this disregard of conventionalities; all the more because Harvey, who, of course, had sat up for her, seemed a trifle anxious. Her spirits were exuberant; she gave a merry, mocking account of the evening, but it included no mention of Cyrus Redgrave. At the end of June her friends the Leaches moved from their old house in Elgin Road to a new one out at Kingsbury-Neasden, and when the removal was completed Alma went there to make a call, taking her husband. Harvey had never been beyond Swiss Cottage on this extension of the Metropolitan Railway; he looked with interest at the new districts springing up towards Harrow, and talked of them with Mrs. Leach. A day or two after, he travelled by himself to a greater distance on the same line, making a survey of the country from Harrow to Aylesbury. At his next meeting with Hugh Carnaby, which took place about the middle of July, he threw out a suggestion that for anyone who wished to live practically in London and yet away from its frenzy, the uplands towards Buckinghamshire were convenient ground.