"And what’s the pericardium?" They both smiled faintly. "The pericardium is the membrane that encloses the heart. I don’t mind telling you that I’ve only just acquired this encyclopædic knowledge from Stirling,--he was there." "And is it supposed to be very dangerous?" "I don’t know. Doctors never want to tell you anything except what you can find out for yourself." After a little hesitating pause they went into the drawing-room, where the lights were still burning, and the full disorder of the musical evening persisted, including the cigarette-ash on the carpet. Tertius Ingpen picked up his clarinet case, took out the instrument, examined the mouthpiece lovingly, and with tenderness laid it back. "Do sit down a moment," said Hilda, sitting limply down. "It’s stifling, isn’t it?" "Let me open the window," he suggested politely. As he returned from the window, he said, pulling his short beard: "It was wonderful how those Orgreaves went through the musical evening, wasn’t it? Makes you proud of being English.... I suppose Janet’s a great friend of yours?" His enthusiasm touched her, and her pride in Janet quickened to it. She gave a deliberate, satisfied nod in reply to his question. She was glad to be alone with him in the silence of the house. "Ed gone to bed?" he questioned, after another little pause. Already he was calling her husband Ed, and with an affectionate intonation! She nodded again. "He stuck it out jolly well," said Ingpen, still standing. "He brings these attacks on himself," said Hilda, with the calm sententiousness of a good digestion discussing a bad one. She was becoming pleased with herself--with her expensive dress, her position, her philosophy, and her power to hold the full attention of this man. Ingpen replied, looking steadily at her: "We bring everything on ourselves." Then he smiled, as a comrade to another. She shifted her pose. A desire to discuss Edwin with this man grew in her, for she needed sympathy intensely. "What do you think of this new scheme of his?" she demanded somewhat self-consciously. "The new works? Seems all right. But I don’t know much about it." "Well, I’m not so sure." And she exposed her theory of the entire satisfactoriness of their present situation, of the needlessness of fresh risks, and of Edwin’s unsuitability for enterprise. "Of course he’s splendid," she said. "But he’ll never push. I can look at him quite impartially--I mean in all those things." Ingpen murmured as it were dreamily: "Have you had much experience of business yourself?" "It depends what you call business. I suppose you know I used to keep a boarding-house." She was a little defiant. "No, I didn’t know. I may have heard vaguely. Did you make it pay?" "It did pay in the end." "But not at first? ... Any disasters?"