At Hammersmith they got out, two quite penniless travellers, and after some anxious moments found a taxi. It took them to Putney Hill. Lady Harman descended at the outer gates of her home and walked up the drive in the darkness while Mr. Brumley went on to his club and solvency again. It was five minutes past eight when he entered the hall of his club.... §6 It had been Lady Harman’s original intention to come home before four, to have tea with her mother and to inform her husband when he returned from the city of her entirely dignified and correct disobedience to his absurd prohibitions. Then he would have bullied at a disadvantage, she would have announced her intention of dining with Lady Viping and making the various calls and expeditions for which she had arranged and all would have gone well. But you see how far accident and a spirit of enterprise may take a lady from so worthy a plan, and when at last she returned to the Victorian baronial home in Putney it was very nearly eight and the house blazed with crisis from pantry to nursery. Even the elder three little girls, who were accustomed to be kissed goodnight by their “boofer muvver,” were still awake and—catching the subtle influence of the atmosphere of dismay about them—in tears. The very under-housemaids were saying: “Where _ever_ can her ladyship ’ave got to?” Sir Isaac had come home that day at an unusually early hour and with a peculiar pinched expression that filled even Snagsby with apprehensive alertness. Sir Isaac had in fact returned in a state of quite unwonted venom. He had come home early because he wished to vent it upon Ellen, and her absence filled him with something of that sensation one has when one puts out a foot for the floor and instead a step drops one down—it seems abysmally. “But where’s she gone, Snagsby?” “Her ladyship _said_ to lunch, Sir Isaac,” said Snagsby. “Good gracious! Where?” “Her ladyship didn’t _say_, Sir Isaac.” “But where? Where the devil——?” “I have—’ave no means whatever of knowing, Sir Isaac.” He had a defensive inspiration. “Perhaps Mrs. Sawbridge, Sir Isaac....” Mrs. Sawbridge was enjoying the sunshine upon the lawn. She sat in the most comfortable garden chair, held a white sunshade overhead, had the last new novel by Mrs. Humphry Ward upon her lap, and was engaged in trying not to wonder where her daughter might be. She beheld with a distinct blenching of the spirit Sir Isaac advancing towards her. She wondered more than ever where Ellen might be. “Here!” cried her son-in-law. “Where’s Ellen gone?” Mrs. Sawbridge with an affected off-handedness was sure she hadn’t the faintest idea. “Then you _ought_ to have,” said Isaac. “She ought to be at home.” Mrs. Sawbridge’s only reply was to bridle slightly. “Where’s she got to? Where’s she gone? Haven’t you any idea at all?” “I was not favoured by Ellen’s confidence,” said Mrs. Sawbridge.