She admired the car, she admired the colour of the car, she admired the lamps of the car and the door of the car and the little fittings of the car. She admired the horn. She admired the twist of the horn. She admired Clarence and the uniform of Clarence and she admired and coveted the great fur coat that he held ready for his employer. (But if she had it, she said, she would wear the splendid fur outside to show every little bit of it.) And when the car at last moved forward and tooted—she admired the note—and vanished softly and swiftly through the gates, she was left in the porch with Mr. Brumley still by sheer inertia admiring and envying. She admired Sir Isaac’s car number Z 900. (Such an easy one to remember!) Then she stopped abruptly, as one might discover that the water in the bathroom was running to waste and turn it off. She had a cynicism as exuberant as the rest of her. “Well,” she said, with a contented sigh and an entire flattening of her tone, “I laid it on pretty thick that time.... I wonder if he’ll send me that hundred guineas or whether I shall have to remind him of it....” Her manner changed again to that of a gigantic gamin. “I mean to have that money,” she said with bright determination and round eyes.... She reflected and other thoughts came to her. “Plutocracy,” she said, “_is_ perfectly detestable, don’t you think so, Mr. Brumley?” ... And then, “I can’t _imagine_ how a man who deals in bread and confectionery can manage to go about so completely half-baked.” “He’s a very remarkable type,” said Mr. Brumley. He became urgent: “I do hope, dear Lady Beach-Mandarin, you will contrive to call on Lady Harman. She is—in relation to _that_—quite the most interesting woman I have seen.” §6 Presently as they paced the croquet lawn together, the preoccupation of Mr. Brumley’s mind drew their conversation back to Lady Harman. “I wish,” he repeated, “you would go and see these people. She’s not at all what you might infer from him.” “What could one infer about a wife from a man like that? Except that she’d have a lot to put up with.” “You know,—she’s a beautiful person, tall, slender, dark....” Lady Beach-Mandarin turned her full blue eye upon him. “_Now!_” she said archly. “I’m interested in the incongruity.” Lady Beach-Mandarin’s reply was silent and singular. She compressed her lips very tightly, fixed her eye firmly on Mr. Brumley’s, lifted her finger to the level of her left eyelash, and then shook it at him very deliberately five times. Then with a little sigh and a sudden and complete restoration of manner she remarked that never in any year before had she seen peonies quite so splendid. “I’ve a peculiar sympathy with peonies,” she said. “They’re so exactly my style.” CHAPTER THE THIRD Lady Harman at Home §1