be all right with her?"

I had not the faintest notion what kind of a creature the "problem" was.

"Right as rain. Euphemia has fixed up to take her to-morrow night to a
lecture on Tolstoi at the Lyceum Club, and to the City Temple on Sunday.
Ho! ho! ho!"

His Homeric laughter must have shattered the Trunk Telephone system of
Great Britain, for after that there was silence cold and merciless.
Well, perhaps it was just as well, for if we had been allowed to
converse further I might have told him that another female woman, Doria
Jornicroft, was staying at Northlands, and he might not have come.
Jaffery was always a queer fish where women were concerned. Not a
chilly, fishy fish, but a sort of Laodicean fish, now hot, now cold. I
have seen him shrink like a sensitive plant in the presence of an
ingenue of nineteen and royster in Pantagruelian fashion with a mature
member of the chorus of the Paris Opera; I ham e also known him to fly,
a scared Joseph, from the allurements of the charming wife of a Right
Honourable Sir Cornifer Potiphar, G.C.M.G., and sigh like a furnace in
front of an obdurate little milliner's place of business in Bond Street.
I do not, for the world, wish it to be supposed that I am insinuating
that my dear old Jaffery had no morals. He had--lots of them. He was
stuffed with them. But what they were, neither he nor I nor any one else
was ever able to define. As a general rule, however, he was shy of
strange women, and to that category did Doria belong.

When the lovers came in I told them my news. Adrian expressed
extravagant delight. A little tiny cloud flitted over Doria's brow.

"Shall I like him?" she asked.

"You'll adore him," cried Adrian.

"I'll try to, dear, because he seems to mean so much to you. Are you
going up to town with us to-morrow?"

"There's only a morning's fitting at a dressmaker--no place for me," he
laughed. "I'll stay and welcome old Jaffery."

Again the most transient of tiny little clouds. But I could not help
thinking that if Jaffery had been a woman instead of a mere man, there
would have been a thunderstorm.

When we were alone Adrian threw himself into a chair.

"Women are funny beings," he said. "I do believe Doria is jealous of old
Jaffery."

"You have every reason to be proud," said I, "of your psychological
acumen."

CHAPTER III

A fair-bearded, red-faced, blue-eyed, grinning giant got out of the
train and catching sight of us ran up and laid