He straddled his legs and looked attentively at the toes of his boots. Lady Holme wondered why he was going. Had Miss Schley made a point of it? She longed to know. The cruel curiosity which the angel was ever trying to beat down rose up in her powerfully. “I say--” Her husband was speaking with some hesitation. “Well?” “Let’s have a squint at the programme, will you?” “Here it is.” She gave it to him and watched him narrowly as he looked quickly over it. “Hulloa!” he said. “What’s the matter?” “Some Imitations,” he said. “What’s that mean?” “Didn’t you know Miss Schley was a mimic?” “A mimic--not I! She’s an actress.” “Yes--now.” “Now? When was she anythin’ else?” “When she began in America. She was a mimic in the music-halls.” “The deuce she was!” He stood looking very grave and puzzled for a minute, then he stared hard at his wife. “What did she mimic?” “I don’t know--people.” Again there was a silence. Then he said-- “I say, I don’t know that I want you to sing at that affair to-morrow.” “But I must. Why not?” He hesitated, shifting from one foot to the other almost like a great boy. “I don’t know what she’s up to,” he answered at last. “Miss Schley?” “Ah!” Lady Holme felt her heart beat faster. Was her husband going to open up a discussion of the thing that had been turning her life to gall during these last weeks--his flirtation, his _liaison_--if it were a _liaison_; she did not know--with the American? The woman who had begun to idealise Fritz and the woman who was desperately jealous of him both seemed to be quivering within her. “Do you mean--?” she began. She stopped, then spoke again in a quiet voice. “Do you mean that you think Miss Schley is going to do something unusual at the concert tomorrow?” “I dunno. She’s the devil.” There was a reluctant admiration in his voice, as there always is in the voice of a man when he describes a woman as gifted with infernal attributes, and this sound stung Lady Holme. It seemed to set that angel upon whom she was calling in the dust, to make of that angel a puppet, an impotent, even a contemptible thing. “My dear Fritz,” she said in a rather loud, clear voice, like the voice of one speaking to a child, “my dear Fritz, you’re surely aware that I have been the subject of Miss Schley’s talent ever since she arrived in London?” “You! What d’you mean?” “You surely can’t be so blind as not to have seen what all London has seen?” “What’s all London seen?’ “Why, that Miss Schley’s been mimicking me!” “Mimickin’ you!” The brown of his large cheeks was invaded by red. “But you have noticed it. I remember your speaking about it.” “Not I!” he exclaimed with energy. “Yes. You spoke of the likeness between us, in expression, in ways of looking and moving.” “That--I thought it was natural.” “You thought it was natural?” There was a profound, if very bitter, compassion in her voice. “Poor old boy!” she added.