to hide my embarrassment. Between two o'clock and half-past five I
lunched, smoked, read, slept, and played a part in certain other events.
This makes it tolerably certain that I did not sleep for more than an
hour and a half.

I was wakened by a most violent opening of the greenhouse door and a
tempestuous rustling of the fronds of the tree fern which I had moved.
Then Lalage burst upon me. My first impulse was to struggle out of my
chair and offer it to her. She made a motion of excited refusal and I
sank back again. I noticed, while she stood before me, that her face
was unusually flushed. It seemed to me that she was passing through what
McMeekin used to describe as a nerve storm. I leaped to the conclusion
that the Archdeacon had not taken kindly to the idea of a marriage with
Miss Battersby.

"How did it go off?" I asked.

"Where's your mother?" said Lalage.

"She's not here. You ought to know better than to expect her to be
here. Is she the sort of person who'd waste an afternoon in a disused
greenhouse? She's probably doing something useful. Did you ask if she
was covering pots of marmalade?"

"I've searched everywhere."

"Never mind. She's certain to turn up for tea."

Lalage stamped her foot.

"I want her at once," she said. "I want to talk to her."

"I'm a very poor substitute for my mother, of course; but if you can't
find her----"

"I've something to tell her," said Lalage; "something that I simply must
tell to somebody."

"I shall be delighted to listen."

Lalage hesitated. She was drumming with her fingers on the edge of an
empty flower pot as if she were playing a very rapid fantasia on the
piano. This seemed to me a further symptom of nerve storm. I encouraged
her to speak, as tactfully as I could.

"Has Miss Battersby," I asked, "rebelled against her destiny?"

Lalage's face suddenly puckered up in a very curious way. I should have
supposed that she was on the verge of tears if there existed any record
of her ever having shed tears. But no one, not even her most intimate
friend ever heard of her crying; so I came to the conclusion that she
wanted to laugh. I felt uneasy, for Lalage usually laughs without any
preliminary puckerings of her face.

"Perhaps," I said, "you're thinking of the Archdeacon."

"I am," said Lalage.

She spoke with a kind of gulp which in the case of Hilda would certainly
have been a premonitory symptom of tears.

"Did he make himself particularly disagree