im not to come to the front door.

"Good-night, Mrs. Searle!" she said, with a smile. "I hope I haven't
stayed too long?"

"No, indeed, ma'am. I'm sure you'd ado him good. He do like them that's
nat'ral. But he don't like to be bothered. And there's people that do
keep on, ma'am, isn't there?"

"I daresay there are."

"Specially with a young gentleman, ma'am. I always do say it's the women
runs after the men. More shame to us, ma'am."

"Has Fan begun yet?"

Mrs. Searle blushed.

"Well, ma'am, really I don't know. But she's awfully put out if anyone
interrupts her when she's with Mr. Heath."

"I must take care what I'm about."

"Oh, ma'am, I'm sure--"

The motor moved away from the little old house. As Mrs. Mansfield looked
out she saw a faint gleam in the studio. Involuntarily she listened,
almost strained her ears. And she murmured, "And the water thereof was
dried up, that the way of the Kings of the East might be prepared."

The gleam was lost in the night. She leaned back and found herself
wondering what Charmian would have thought of the music she had just
heard.

CHAPTER V

Mrs. Shiffney had more money than she knew how to spend, although she
was recklessly extravagant. Her mother, who was dead, had been an
Austrian Jewess, and from her had come the greater part of Mrs.
Shiffney's large personal fortune. Her father, Sir Willy Manning, was
still alive, and was a highly cultivated and intelligent Englishman of
the cosmopolitan type; Mrs. Shiffney derived her peculiar and attractive
look of high breeding and her completely natural manner from him. From
her mother she had received the nomadic instinct which kept her
perpetually restless, and which often drove her about the world in
search of the change and diversion which never satisfied her. Lady
Manning had been a feverish traveller and had written several careless
and clever books of description. She had died of a fever in Hong-Kong
while her husband was in Scotland. Although apparently of an unreserved
nature, he had never bemoaned her loss.

Mrs. Shiffney had a husband, a lenient man who loved comfort and who was
fond of his wife in an altruistic way. She and he got on excellently
when they were together and quite admirably when they were parted, as
they very often were, for yachting made Mr. Shiffney feel "remarkably
cheap." As he much preferred to feel expensive he had nothing to do with
_The Wanderer_ unless she lay snug in harbor. H