took up his pen from the table.

"I'm so sorry," said Lady Dashwood, "but he used to know May Dashwood,
so we must ask him, and I thought it better to get him over at once and
have done with it."

"Perhaps so," said the Warden, and he stretched out his left hand for
paper. "Only--one never has done--with Boreham."

"Poor old Jim!" said Lady Dashwood, "and now, dear, you can get back to
your book," and she moved away.

"Book!" grumbled the Warden. "It's business I have to do; and anyhow I
don't see how anyone can write books now! Except prophecies of the
future, admonitions, sketches of possible policies, heart-searchings."

Lady Dashwood moved away. "Well, that's what you're doing, dear," she
said.

"I don't know," said the Warden gloomily, and he reached out his hand,
pulling towards him some papers. "One seems to be at the beginning of
things."

Lady Dashwood closed the door softly behind her.

"He's perplexed," she said to herself. "He is perplexed--not merely
because we are at 'the beginning of things,' but because--I have been a
fool and----" She did not finish the sentence. She went up early to her
room and dressed for dinner.

It was impossible to be certain when May would come, so it would be
better to get dressed and have the time clear. May's arrival was serious
business--so serious that Lady Dashwood shuddered at the mere thought
that it was by a mere stroke of extraordinary luck that she could come
and would come! If May came by the six train she would arrive before
seven.

But seven o'clock struck and May had not arrived. She might arrive about
eight o'clock. Lady Dashwood, who was already dressed, gave orders that
dinner was to be put off for twenty minutes, and then she telephoned
this news to Mr. Boreham and sent in a message to the Warden. But she
quite forgot to tell Gwen that dinner was to be later. Gwen had gone
upstairs early to dress for dinner, for she was one of those individuals
who take a long time to do the simplest thing. This omission on the part
of Lady Dashwood, trifling as it seemed, had far-reaching
consequences--consequences that were not foreseen by her. She sat in the
drawing-room actively occupied in imagining obstacles that might prevent
May Dashwood from keeping the promise in her telegram: railway
accidents, taxi accidents, the unexpected sudden deaths of relatives. As
she sat absorbed in these wholly unnecessary and exhausting
speculations, the door opened and she he