“They never had tickets of mine!” cried Sir Isaac stoutly and indignantly. And then the thought of Georgina came like a blow upon his heart.... In his flurry he went on denying.... The subsequent conversation in the smoking-room was as red-eared and disagreeable for Sir Isaac as any conversation could be. “But how _could_ such a thing have happened?” he asked in a voice that sounded bleached to him. “How could such a thing have come about?” Their eyes were dreadful. Did they guess? Could they guess? Conscience within him was going up and down shouting out, “Georgina, your sister-in-law, Georgina,” so loudly that he felt the whole smoking-room must be hearing it.... §8 As Lady Harman came up through the darkness of the drive to her home, she was already regretting very deeply that she had not been content to talk to Mr. Brumley in Kensington Gardens instead of accepting his picturesque suggestion of Hampton Court. There was an unpleasant waif-like feeling about this return. She was reminded of pictures published in the interests of Doctor Barnardo’s philanthropies,—Dr. Barnardo her favourite hero in real life,—in which wistful little outcasts creep longingly towards brightly lit but otherwise respectable homes. It wasn’t at all the sort of feeling she would have chosen if she had had a choice of feelings. She was tired and dusty and as she came into the hall the bright light was blinding. Snagsby took her wrap. “Sir Isaac, me lady, ’as been enquiring for your ladyship,” he communicated. Sir Isaac appeared on the staircase. “Good gracious, Elly!” he shouted. “Where you been?” Lady Harman decided against an immediate reply. “I shall be ready for dinner in half an hour,” she told Snagsby and went past him to the stairs. Sir Isaac awaited her. “Where you been?” he repeated as she came up to him. A housemaid on the staircase and the second nursemaid on the nursery landing above shared Sir Isaac’s eagerness to hear her answer. But they did not hear her answer, for Lady Harman with a movement that was all too reminiscent of her mother’s in the garden, swept past him towards the door of her own room. He followed her and shut the door on the thwarted listeners. “Here!” he said, with a connubial absence of restraint. “Where the devil you been? What the deuce do you think you’ve been getting up to?” She had been calculating her answers since the moment she had realized that she was to return home at a disadvantage. (It is not my business to blame her for a certain disingenuousness; it is my business simply to record it.) “I went out to lunch at Lady Beach-Mandarin’s,” she said. “I told you I meant to.” “Lunch!” he cried. “Why, it’s eight!” “I met—some people. I met Agatha Alimony. I have a perfect right to go out to lunch——” “You met a nice crew I’ll bet. But that don’t account for your being out to eight, does it? With all the confounded household doing as it pleases!” “I went on—to see the borders at Hampton Court.” “With _her_?”