t, remorseful glance from beneath the drooping
eyelashes and generally endeavours to convey to him that, if he wants to
get together across a round table and try to find a formula, she is all
for it too. Yes, I am bound to say I found that going-to-bed stuff a bit
disquieting.

"Gone to bed, eh?" I murmured musingly.

"What did you want her for?"

"I thought she might like a stroll and a chat."

"Are you going for a stroll?" said Aunt Dahlia, with a sudden show of
interest. "Where?"

"Oh, hither and thither."

"Then I wonder if you would mind doing something for me."

"Give it a name."

"It won't take you long. You know that path that runs past the
greenhouses into the kitchen garden. If you go along it, you come to a
pond."

"That's right."

"Well, will you get a good, stout piece of rope or cord and go down that
path till you come to the pond----"

"To the pond. Right."

"--and look about you till you find a nice, heavy stone. Or a fairly
large brick would do."

"I see," I said, though I didn't, being still fogged. "Stone or brick.
Yes. And then?"

"Then," said the relative, "I want you, like a good boy, to fasten the
rope to the brick and tie it around your damned neck and jump into the
pond and drown yourself. In a few days I will send and have you fished up
and buried because I shall need to dance on your grave."

I was more fogged than ever. And not only fogged--wounded and resentful.
I remember reading a book where a girl "suddenly fled from the room,
afraid to stay for fear dreadful things would come tumbling from her
lips; determined that she would not remain another day in this house to
be insulted and misunderstood." I felt much about the same.

Then I reminded myself that one has got to make allowances for a woman
with only about half a spoonful of soup inside her, and I checked the
red-hot crack that rose to the lips.

"What," I said gently, "is this all about? You seem pipped with Bertram."

"Pipped!"

"Noticeably pipped. Why this ill-concealed animus?"

A sudden flame shot from her eyes, singeing my hair.

"Who was the ass, who was the chump, who was the dithering idiot who
talked me, against my better judgment, into going without my dinner? I
might have guessed----"

I saw that I had divined correctly the cause of her strange mood.

"It's all right. Aunt Dahlia. I know just how you're feeling. A bit on
the hollow side, what? But the agony will pass. If I were you, I'd sneak