ad contrived to pick up Alvina at the
Hospital, contrived to bring her to his house at half-past three,
for tea.

"What do you think of this new war?" said Alvina.

"Oh, it will be over in six weeks," said the doctor easily. And
there they left it. Only, with a fleeting thought, Alvina wondered
if it would affect the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. She had never heard any
more of them.

"Where would you have liked to go today?" said the doctor, turning
to smile at her as he drove the car.

"I think to Windermere--into the Lakes," she said.

"We might make a tour of the Lakes before long," he said. She was
not thinking, so she took no particular notice of the speech.

"How nice!" she said vaguely.

"We could go in the car, and take them as we chose," said the
doctor.

"Yes," she said, wondering at him now.

When they had had tea, quietly and gallantly tete-a-tete in his
drawing-room, he asked her if she would like to see the other rooms
of the house. She thanked him, and he showed her the substantial oak
dining-room, and the little room with medical works and a revolving
chair, which he called his study: then the kitchen and the pantry,
the housekeeper looking askance; then upstairs to his bedroom, which
was very fine with old mahogany tall-boys and silver candle-sticks
on the dressing-table, and brushes with green ivory backs, and a
hygienic white bed and straw mats: then the visitors' bedroom
corresponding, with its old satin-wood furniture and cream-coloured
chairs with large, pale-blue cushions, and a pale carpet with
reddish wreaths. Very nice, lovely, awfully nice, I do like that,
isn't that beautiful, I've never seen anything like that! came the
gratifying fireworks of admiration from Alvina. And he smiled and
gloated. But in her mind she was thinking of Manchester House, and
how dark and horrible it was, how she hated it, but how it had
impressed Ciccio and Geoffrey, how they would have loved to feel
themselves masters of it, and how done in the eye they were. She
smiled to herself rather grimly. For this afternoon she was feeling
unaccountably uneasy and wistful, yearning into the distance again:
a trick she thought she had happily lost.

The doctor dragged her up even to the slanting attics. He was a big
man, and he always wore navy blue suits, well-tailored and
immaculate. Unconsciously she felt that big men in good navy-blue
suits, especially if they had reddish faces and rather big feet and
if their hair