“But surely; isn’t his name enough?” asked Lady Harman. “Without yours, it’s only half a name!” cried Lady Beach-Mandarin. “If it were a _business_ thing——! Different of course. But on my list, I’m like dear old Queen Victoria you know, the wives must come too.” “In that case,” hesitated Lady Harman.... “But really I think Sir Isaac——” She stopped. And then Mr. Brumley had a psychic experience. It seemed to him as he stood observing Lady Harman with an entirely unnecessary and unpremeditated intentness, that for the briefest interval her attention flashed over Lady Beach-Mandarin’s shoulder to the end verandah window; and following her glance, he saw—and then he did not see—the arrested figure, the white face of Sir Isaac, bearing an expression in which anger and horror were extraordinarily intermingled. If it was Sir Isaac he dodged back with amazing dexterity; if it was a phantom of the living it vanished with an air of doing that. Without came the sound of a flower-pot upset and a faint expletive. Mr. Brumley looked very quickly at Lady Beach-Mandarin, who was entirely unconscious of anything but her own uncoiling and enveloping eloquence, and as quickly at Miss Sharsper. But Miss Sharsper was examining a blackish bureau through her glasses as though she were looking for birthmarks and meant if she could find one to claim the piece as her own long-lost connection. With a mild but gratifying sense of exclusive complicity Mr. Brumley reverted to Lady Harman’s entire self-possession. “But, dear Lady Harman, it’s entirely unnecessary you should consult him,—entirely,” Lady Beach-Mandarin was saying. “I’m sure,” said Mr. Brumley with a sense that somehow he had to intervene, “that Sir Isaac would not possibly object. I’m sure that if Lady Harman consults him——” The sandy-whiskered butler appeared hovering. “Shall I place the tea-things in the garden, me lady?” he asked, in the tone of one who knows the answer. “Oh _please_ in the garden!” cried Lady Beach-Mandarin. “Please! And how delightful to _have_ a garden, a London garden, in which one _can_ have tea. Without being smothered in blacks. The south-west wind. The dear _English_ wind. All your blacks come to _us_, you know.” She led the way upon the verandah. “Such a wonderful garden! The space, the breadth! Why! you must have Acres!” She surveyed the garden—comprehensively; her eye rested for a moment on a distant patch of black that ducked suddenly into a group of lilacs. “Is dear Sir Isaac at home?” she asked. “He’s very uncertain,” said Lady Harman, with a quiet readiness that pleased Mr. Brumley. “Yes, Snagsby, please, under the big cypress. And tell my mother and sister.”