What an afternoon they had, Margaret and her stepmother! The big car took them to Westminster and the West End and back again. They were making appointments, purchasing wildly, discussing endlessly. Or so it seemed to Margaret, who, exhilarated at first, became conscious towards the end of the day of nothing but an overmastering fatigue. She had ordered several dozens of underwear, teagowns, dressing-gowns, whitewash, a china bath, and electric lights! They appeared and disappeared incongruously in her bewildered brain. She had protected her panels, yet yielded to the necessity for drains. Her head was in a whirl and Gabriel himself temporarily eclipsed. Her stepmother was indefatigable, the greater the rush the greater her enjoyment. She would even have started furnishing but that Margaret was firm in refusing to visit either of the emporiums she suggested. “Gabriel and I have our own ideas, we know exactly what we want. The glib fluency of the shopmen takes my breath away.” Mrs. Rysam urged their expert knowledge. Whatever her private opinion of the house, its size or position, she fell in easily with Margaret’s enthusiasm. “You must not risk making any mistake. Messrs. Rye & Gilgat or Maturin’s, that place in Albemarle Street, they all have experts who have the periods at their fingers’ ends. You’ve only got to tell them the year, and they’ll set to work and get you chintzes and brocades and everything suitable from a coal scuttle to a cabinet....” Margaret, however, although over-tired, was not to be persuaded to put herself and her little house unreservedly into any one’s hands. She was not capable of effort, only of resistance. Tea at Rumpelmayer’s was an interregnum and not a rest. More clothes became a nightmare, she begged to be taken home, was alarmed when Mrs. Rysam offered to go on alone, and begged her to desist. When the car took them back to Queen Anne’s Gate, Gabriel had already left after a most satisfactory interview with her father. Edgar B., seeing his daughter’s exhaustion and pallor, had the grace not to insist on explaining the word “satisfactory.” He insisted instead that she should rest, sleep till dinnertime. The inexhaustible stepmother heard that Gabriel had been pleased with everything Margaret’s father had suggested. He would settle house and furniture, make provision for the future. Whatever was done for Margaret or her children was to be done for her alone, he wanted nothing but the dear privilege of caring for her. Edgar appreciated his attitude and it did not make him feel less liberal. “And the house? How about this house they’ve seen in Westminster? Is it good enough? big enough? He said it was a little house, but why so small?” “They are just dead set on it. Small or large you won’t get them to look at another. It’s just something out of the way and quaint, such as Margaret would go crazy on. No bathroom, no drains, but a paved courtyard and a lead figure....”