Agg was the eldest daughter of the Agg family, a broad-minded and turbulent tribe who acknowledged the nominal headship of a hard-working and successful barrister.  She was a painter, and lived and slept in semi-independence in a studio of her own in Manresa Road, but maintained close and constant relations with the rest of the tribe.  In shape and proportions fairly tall and fairly thin, she counted in shops among the stock-sizes; but otherwise she was entitled to call herself unusual.  She kept her hair about as short as the hair of a boy who has postponed going to the barber’s for a month after the proper time, and she incompletely covered the hair with the smallest possible hat.  Her coat was long and straight and her skirt short.  Her boots were high, reaching well up the calf, but they had high heels and were laced in some hundreds of holes.  She carried a cane in a neatly gloved hand.  She was twenty-seven.  In style Marguerite and Agg made a great contrast with one another.  Each was fully aware of the contrast, and liked it.

“Good evening, Mr. Cannon,” said Agg firmly, not shaking hands.

George had met her once in the way of small-talk at her father’s house.  Having yet to learn the important truth that it takes all sorts to make a world, he did not like her and wondered why she existed.  He could understand Agg being fond of Marguerite, but he could not understand Marguerite being fond of Agg; and the friendship between these two, now that he actually for the first time saw it in being, irked him.

“Is anything the matter?...  Have you seen father?” asked Marguerite in a serious, calm tone, turning to him.  Like George, she had run into the studio without putting on any street attire.

George perceived that there was no secret in the studio as to the crisis in the Haim family.  Clearly the topic had been under discussion.  Prince as well as Agg was privy to it.  He did not quite like that.  He was vaguely jealous of both Prince and Agg.  Indeed he was startled to find that Marguerite could confide such a matter to Prince—­at any rate without consulting himself.  While not definitely formulating the claim in his own mind, he had somehow expected of Marguerite that until she met him she would have existed absolutely sole, without any sentimental connexions of any sort, in abeyance, waiting for his miraculous advent.  He was glad that Mr. Buckingham Smith was not of the conclave; he felt that he could not have tolerated Mr. Buckingham Smith.

“Yes, I’ve seen him,” George answered.

“Did he tell you?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Prince, after a little hovering, retired to his press, and a wheel could be heard creaking.

“What did he tell you?”

“He told me about—­the marriage....  And I gathered there’d been a bit of a scene.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

Agg then interjected, fixing her blue eyes on George: