imson-lake, which, if indelible, might supply a solution to the
problem of what was to be done now about her own frock. She kept an eye,
too, on Captain Puffin, to see if he showed any signs of improvement in
the direction she had indicated to him in her interview, and was
rejoiced to see that one of these glances was clearly the cause of his
refusing a second glass of port. He had already taken the stopper out of
the decanter when their eyes met ... and then he put it back again.
Improvement already!

Everything else (pending the discovery as to whether chocolate on
crimson-lake spelt ruin) now faded into a middle distance, while the
affairs of Susan and poor Mr. Wyse occupied the entire foreground of
Miss Mapp's consciousness. Mean and cunning as Susan's conduct must have
been in entrapping Mr. Wyse when others had failed to gain his
affection, Miss Mapp felt that it would be only prudent to continue on
the most amicable of terms with her, for as future sister-in-law to a
countess, and wife to the man who by the mere exercise of his presence
could make Tilling sit up and behave, she would doubtless not hesitate
about giving Miss Mapp some nasty ones back if retaliation demanded. It
was dreadful to think that this audacious climber was so soon to belong
to the Wyses of Whitchurch, but since the moonlight had revealed that
such was Mr. Wyse's intention, it was best to be friends with the Mammon
of the British Empire. Poppit-cum-Wyse was likely to be a very important
centre of social life in Tilling, when not in Scotland or Whitchurch or
Capri, and Miss Mapp wisely determined that even the announcement of the
engagement should not induce her to give voice to the very proper
sentiments which it could not help inspiring.

After all she had done for Susan, in letting the door of high-life in
Tilling swing open for her when she could not possibly keep it shut any
longer, it seemed only natural that, if she only kept on good terms with
her now, Susan would insist that her dear Elizabeth must be the first to
be told of the engagement. This made her pause before adopting the
obvious course of setting off immediately after breakfast next morning,
and telling all her friends, under promise of secrecy, just what she had
seen in the moonlight last night. Thrilling to the narrator as such an
announcement would be, it would be even more thrilling, provided only
that Susan had sufficient sense of decency to tell her of the engagement