Through its agency, people unaccountably lose their way in the simplest walks, and turn up late and embarrassed for luncheon.  At the end of the evening, it brings any number of couples blinking out of the dark, with no idea the clock was striking more than half-past nine.

And it delights in sending one into the garden—­in search of roses or dahlias or upas-trees or something of the sort, of course—­and thereby causing one to encounter the most unlikely people, and really, quite the last person one would have thought of meeting, as all frequenters of house-party junketings will assure you.  And thus is this special house-party providence responsible for a great number of marriages, and, it may be, for a large percentage of the divorce cases; for, if you desire very heartily to see anything of another member of a house-party, this lax-minded and easy-going providence will somehow always bring the event about in a specious manner, and without any apparent thought of the consequences.

And the Musgraves’ house-party was no exception.

Mrs. Ashmeade, for reasons of her own, took daily note of this.  The others were largely engrossed by their own affairs; they did not seriously concern themselves about the doings of their fellow-guests.  And, besides, if John Charteris manifestly sought the company of Patricia Musgrave, her husband did not appear to be exorbitantly dissatisfied or angry or even lonely; and, be this as it might, the fact remained that Celia Reindan was at this time more than a little interested in Teddy Anstruther; and Felix Kennaston was undeniably very attentive to Kathleen Saumarez; and Tom Gelwix was quite certainly devoting the major part of his existence to sitting upon the beach with Rosalind Jemmett.

For, in Lichfield at all events, everyone’s house has at least a pane or so of glass in it; and, if indiscriminate stone-throwing were ever to become the fashion, there is really no telling what damage might ensue.  And so had Mrs. Ashmeade been a younger woman—­had time and an adoring husband not rendered her as immune to an insanity a deux as any of us may hope to be upon this side of saintship or senility—­why, Mrs. Ashmeade would most probably have remained passive, and Mrs. Ashmeade would never have come into this story at all.

As it was, she approached Rudolph Musgrave with a fixed purpose this morning as he smoked an after-breakfast cigarette on the front porch of Matocton.  And,

“Rudolph,” said Mrs. Ashmeade, “are you blind?”

“You mean—?” he asked, and he broke off, for he had really no conception of what she meant.

And Mrs. Ashmeade said, “I mean Patricia and Charteris.  Did you think I was by any chance referring to the man in the moon and the Queen of Sheba?”

If ever amazement showed in a man’s eyes, it shone now in Rudolph Musgrave’s.  After a little, the pupils widened in a sort of terror.  So this was what Clarice Pendomer had been hinting at.