What various hindrances we meet-- and she thought the next line, which she didn't remember, must have been: Before at tea ourselves we seat. But though one portion of her mind was repeating this with nervous levity, the other was full of concern for the number of journeys up and down all those stairs the parlourmaid was being obliged to make. It was--well, thoughtless of Everard to make her go up and down so often. Probably he didn't realise--of course he didn't--how very many stairs there were. When and how could she talk to him about things like this? When would he be in such a mood that she would be able to do so without making them worse? And how, in what words sufficiently tactful, sufficiently gentle, would she be able to avoid his being offended? She must manage somehow. But tact--management--prudence--all these she had not yet in her life needed. Had she the smallest natural gift for them? Besides, each of them applied to love seemed to her an insult. She had supposed that love, real love, needed none of these protections. She had thought it was a simple, sturdy growth that could stand anything.... Why, here was the parlourmaid already, teapot and all. How very quick she had been! Chesterton, however, hadn't so much been quick as tactful, managing, and prudent. She had been practising these qualities on the other side of the door, whither she had taken the teapot and quietly waited with it a few minutes, and whence she now brought it back. She placed it on the table with admirable composure; and when Wemyss, on her politely asking whether there were anything else he required, said, 'Yes. You will now take away that toast and bring fresh,' she took the toast also only as far as the other side of the door, and waited with it there a little. Lucy now hoped they would have tea. 'Shall I pour it out?' she asked after a moment a little anxiously, for he still didn't move and she began to be afraid the toast might be going to be the next hindrance; in which case they would go round and round for the rest of the day, never catching up the tea at all. But he did go over and sit down at the table, followed by her who hardly now noticed its position, so much surprised and absorbed was she by his methods of housekeeping. 'Isn't it monstrous,' he said, sitting down heavily, 'how we've been kept waiting for such a simple thing as tea. I tell you they're the most slovenly----' There was Chesterton again, bearing the toast-rack balanced on the tip of a respectful ringer. This time even Lucy realised that it must be the same toast, and her hand, lifted in the act of pouring out tea, trembled, for she feared the explosion that was bound to come.