ame, rejoicing effusively in those crowning triumphs
of a woman's being, there was Miss Sawbridge vociferous in support and
Mrs. Sawbridge almost offering to join hands in rapturous benediction,
and there was Lady Harman wearing her laurels, not indeed with
indifference but with a curious detachment. One might imagine her
genuinely anxious to understand why Lady Beach-Mandarin was in such a
stupendous ebullition. One might have supposed her a mere cold-hearted
intellectual if it wasn't that something in her warm beauty absolutely
forbade any such interpretation. There came to Mr. Brumley again a
thought that had occurred to him first when Sir Isaac and Lady Harman
had come together to Black Strand, which was that life had happened to
this woman before she was ready for it, that her mind some years after
her body was now coming to womanhood, was teeming with curiosity about
all she had hitherto accepted, about Sir Isaac, about her children and
all her circumstances....

There was a recapitulation of the invitations, a renewed offering of
outlooks and vistas and Agatha Alimony. "You'll not forget," insisted
Lady Beach-Mandarin. "You'll not afterwards throw us over."

"No," said Lady Harman, with that soft determination of hers. "I'll
certainly come."

"I'm so sorry, so very sorry, not to have seen Sir Isaac," Lady
Beach-Mandarin insisted.

The raid had accomplished its every object and was drifting doorward.
For a moment Lady Beach-Mandarin desisted from Lady Harman and threw her
whole being into an eddying effort to submerge the already subjugated
Mrs. Sawbridge. Miss Sawbridge was behind up the oak staircase
explaining Sir Isaac's interest in furniture-buying to Miss Sharsper.
Mr. Brumley had his one moment with Lady Harman.

"I gather," he said, and abandoned that sentence.

"I hope," he said, "that you will have my little house down there. I
like to think of _you_--walking in my garden."

"I shall love that garden," she said. "But I shall feel unworthy."

"There are a hundred little things I want to tell you--about it."

Then all the others seemed to come into focus again, and with a quick
mutual understanding--Mr. Brumley was certain of its mutuality--they
said no more to one another. He was entirely satisfied he had said
enough. He had conveyed just everything that was needed to excuse and
explain and justify his presence in that company.... Upon a big table in
the hall he noticed that a silk hat and an um