would certainly call, usury. That, indeed! She would raise her
fine brows, compress her lips, and turn to her bed, then put out the
light. Lying awake very often, she might hear James chain the front
door, trumpet through his nose on the mat, and slowly mount the stairs
to his own room. She thought resolutely of Lancelot pursuing his
panting quests at school, or of her garden in mid-June, or of the
gorse afire on Wycross Common,--and so to sleep.

A long chapter, but you will know the Macartney pair by means of it.

CHAPTER II

A DINNER PARTY

This was not to be one of Macartney's grand full-dress dinner-parties,
the sort where you might have two lords, and would be sure to have one
with his lady; or a Cabinet Minister in a morning-coat and greenish
tie; or a squire and squiress from Northumberland up for a month of
the season; or the Dean of Mells. No, nor was it to be one which Lucy
had to give to her visiting-list, and at which, as Macartney rarely
failed to remark, there was bound to be a clergyman, and some lean
woman with straw-coloured hair interested in a Settlement. It was to
be a particular kind of dinner-party, this one, of which the first
object was to bring Urquhart in touch with Lingen. It could have been
done at a club, no doubt. Macartney admitted it. "Yes, I know, I
know,"--he used his most tired voice, as if he had been combating the
suggestion all along. "You are perfectly right. It might--if it had
not happened to be exactly what I didn't want. Jimmy Urquhart is
rather a queer fish. He is apt to shy off if one is not careful. It
don't suit me to bring them together explicitly, do you see? I want
them to happen on each other. They can do that better here than
anywhere. Do you see?"

Lucy saw, or saw enough. She never enquired into James's law affairs.
"Shall I like Mr. Urquhart, do you think?" she asked him.

The eyeglass focussed upon the cornice, and glared at a fly which
found itself belated there. "Oh, I think so. Why not?"

"Well, you see, I don't know why not--or why I should. Have I ever
seen him?"

James was bored. "No doubt you have. He's very much about."

"Yes," said Lucy, "but I am not."

James left the fly, and fixed her--apparently with horror. Then he
looked at his boots and moved his toes up and down. "He looks like a
naval officer," he said; "you instinctively seek the cuffs of his
coat. Beef-coloured face, blue eyes, a square-jawed chap. Yes, you
might like him.