"I thought so," said her daughter. "We heard you." "Really men are most ridiculous cowards," she cried, frowning hard at Denis. "There's Sir Joseph, for instance. He's failed ignominiously with Lord Henry; has been unable to induce him to give up his absurd mission to China, and instead of coming here to tell me all about it, he keeps me thirty-five minutes brawling at him over the 'phone in this heat, simply because he daren't face me!" Denis stretched out his legs before him and clasped his hands at the back of his head. This was a signal, well known to the women, that a long analytical speech was to follow, and Mrs. Delarayne looked wearily away, as if to imply before the start that she was not in the least interested. "It's all organisation nowadays," Denis began. "If you can organise your machinery with the help of good subordinates, the trick is done. And since Sir Joseph simply exudes lubricants, everything works smoothly and successfully. He----" "Don't talk of exuding lubricants in this weather, please!" Mrs. Delarayne interrupted. "I suffer from the heat almost as badly as butter." It was becoming clear to Cleopatra that her mother was for some reason intent on chastising their visitor, and she watched the interesting woman before her with her filial feeling in almost complete abeyance. The children of remarkable parents frequently do this after they have turned a certain age. It is not disrespect, but merely absent-mindedness. It was almost dark now, and Denis noticed Mrs. Delarayne's fine profile outlined against the lighted rooms of the house. There was a sadness delineated on her handsome, aristocratic face, which, as he had observed before, was to be seen only when her features were quite still. Could this apparently gay widow still be mourning her husband? Denis was sufficiently romantic and ill-informed to imagine this just possible. "So the interview between Sir Joseph and Lord Henry was a failure?" he enquired trying to be sympathetic. "Yes, of course," Mrs. Delarayne rejoined, flinging her cigarette into the bushes at her side. "And I do so hate the idea of going out to China." Cleopatra laughed. "But, Edith, surely you don't really mean that you'll go to China if Lord Henry goes?" Denis glanced quickly at Cleopatra and in his eyes she read the supercilious message: "People of _our_ generation could not be so foolish." "You don't flatter yourself, Cleo, I hope," Mrs. Delarayne retorted icily, "that I say these things to amuse you and Denis, do you?" Cleopatra signified by a glance directed at Denis that she did not like the message in his eyes, and regretting the laugh with which she had opened her last remark, she turned conciliatingly to her mother. "I'd go with you, Edith dear, if you wanted me to," she said. For the first time since he had made their acquaintance Denis began to have the shadow of an understanding of the depth of these two women's attachment to each other, and he bowed his head.