“Before tea?” Mrs. Aldwinkle echoed shrilly, as though outraged. “But why didn’t you let me know in time when you were coming?” she went on, turning to Calamy. The thought that he had arrived when she was not there and that he had, moreover, spent all this time talking with Mary Thriplow annoyed her. Mrs. Aldwinkle was perpetually haunted by the fear that she was missing something. For a number of years now the universe had always seemed to be conspiring to keep her away from the places where the exciting things were happening and the wonderful words being said. She had been loth enough, this morning, to leave Miss Thriplow behind at the palace; Mrs. Aldwinkle didn’t want her guests to lead independent existences out of her sight. But if she had known, if she had had the slightest suspicion, that Calamy was going to arrive while she was away, that he would spend hours _en tête à tête_ with Mary Thriplow—why then she would never have gone down to the sea at all. She’d have stayed at home, however tempting the prospect of a bathe. “You seem to have made yourself extremely smart for the occasion,” Mrs. Aldwinkle went on, looking at Miss Thriplow’s pearls and her black silk with the white piping round the flounces. Miss Thriplow looked at the view and pretended not to have heard what her hostess had said. She had no wish to engage in a conversation on this particular subject. “Well now,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle to her new guest, “I must show you the view and the house and all that.” “Miss Thriplow’s already very kindly been doing that,” said Calamy. At this piece of information Mrs. Aldwinkle looked extremely annoyed. “But she can’t have shown you everything,” she said, “because she doesn’t know what there is to show. And besides, Mary knows nothing about the history of the place, or the Cybo Malaspinas, or the artists who worked on the palace, or ...” she waved her hand with a gesture indicating that, in fine, Mary Thriplow knew nothing whatever and was completely incapable of showing any one round the house and its gardens. “In any case,” said Calamy, doing his best to say the right thing, “I’ve seen enough already to make me think the place perfectly lovely.” But Mrs. Aldwinkle was not content with this spontaneous and untutored admiration. She was sure that he had not really seen the beauty of the view, that he had not understood it, not known how to analyse it into its component charms. She began to expound the prospect. “The cypresses make such a wonderful contrast with the olives,” she explained, prodding the landscape with the tip of her parasol, as though she were giving a lantern lecture with coloured slides. _She_ understood it all, of course; _she_ was entirely qualified to appreciate it in every detail. For the view was now her property. It was therefore the finest in the world; but at the same time, she alone had the right to let you know the fact.