it. She hadn't meant to smile at Mr.
Wilkins, not ever; but really he looked--and then his voice was the top
of the rest of him, oblivious of the towel and his legs, and talking
just like a church.

"Allow me to introduce myself," said Mr. Wilkins, with the
ceremony of the drawing-room. "My name is Mellersh-Wilkins."

And he instinctively held out his hand a second time at the
words.

"I thought perhaps it was," said Scrap, a second time having hers
shaken and a second time unable not to smile.

He was about to proceed to the first of the graceful tributes he
had prepared in the train, oblivious, as he could not see himself, that
he was without his clothes, when the servants came running up the
stairs and, simultaneously, Mrs. Fisher appeared in the doorway of her
sitting-room. For all this had happened very quickly, and the servants
away in the kitchen, and Mrs. Fisher pacing her battlements, had not
had time on hearing the noise to appear before the second handshake.

The servants when they heard the dreaded noise knew at once what
had happened, and rushed straight into the bathroom to try and staunch
the flood, taking no notice of the figure on the landing in the towel,
but Mrs. Fisher did not know what the noise could be, and coming out of
her room to inquire stood rooted on the door-sill.

It was enough to root anybody. Lady Caroline shaking hands with
what evidently, if he had had clothes on, would have been Mrs.
Wilkins's husband, and both of them conversing just as if--

Then Scrap became aware of Mrs. Fisher. She turned to her at once. "Do
let me," she said gracefully, "introduce Mr. Mellersh-Wilkins. He has
just come. This," she added, turning to Mr. Wilkins, "is Mrs. Fisher."

And Mr. Wilkins, nothing if not courteous, reacted at once to the
conventional formula. First he bowed to the elderly lady in the
doorway, then he crossed over to her, his wet feet leaving footprints
as he went, and having got to her he politely held out his hand.

"It is a pleasure," said Mr. Wilkins in his carefully modulated
voice, "to meet a friend of my wife's."

Scrap melted away down into the garden.

Chapter 15

The strange effect of this incident was that when they met that
evening at dinner both Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline had a singular
feeling of secret understanding with Mr. Wilkins. He could not be to
them as other men. He could not be to them as he would have been if
they had met him i