It was some revival of this idea which explained her exclamation, “How dare he?” For his conduct appeared more in the light of an outrage and insult to her than of a degradation of himself.  He must be rescued from his position, she determined.

She stooped to pick up the bill from the floor as the brougham swung sharply round a corner.  She looked out of the window; the coachman had turned into Berkeley Square; in another hundred yards she would reach home.  She hastily pulled the check-string, and the footman came to the door.  “Drive down the Mile-End road,” she said; “I will fetch Sir John home.”  Lady Tamworth read the address on the bill.  “Near the Pavilion Theatre,” Mr. Dale had explained.  She would just see the place this evening, she determined, and then reflect on the practical course to be pursued.

The decision relieved her of her sense of humiliation, and she nestled back among her furs with a sigh of content.  There was a pleasurable excitement about her present impulse which contrasted very brightly with her recent ennui.  She felt that her wish to do something, to exert an influence, had been providentially answered.  The task, besides, seemed to her to have a flavour of antique chivalry; it smacked of the princess undoing enchantments, and reminded her vaguely of Camelot.  She determined to stop at the house and begin the work at once; so she summoned the footman a second time and gave him the address.  So great indeed was the charm which her conception exercised over her, that her very indignation against Julian changed to pity.  He had to be fitted to the chivalric pattern, and consequently refashioned.  Her harlequin fancy straightway transformed him into the romantic lover who, having lost his mistress, had lost the world and therefore, naturally, held the sale of baby-linen on a par with the painting of pictures.  “Poor Julian!” she thought.

The carriage stopped suddenly in front of a shuttered window.  A neighbouring gas-lamp lit up the letters on the board above it, Z.  Moss.  This unexpected check in the full flight of ardour dropped her to earth like a plummet.  And as if to accentuate her disappointment the surrounding shops were aglare with light; customers pressed busily in and out of them, and even on the roadway naphtha-jets waved flauntingly over barrows of sweet-stuff and fruit.  Only this sordid little house was dark.  “They can’t afford to close at this hour,” she murmured reproachfully.

The footman came to the carriage door, disdain perceptibly struggling through his mask of impassivity.

“Why is the shop closed?” Lady Tamworth asked.

“The name, perhaps, my lady,” he suggested.  “It is Friday.”

Lady Tamworth had forgotten the day.  “Very well,” she said sullenly.  “Home at once!” However, she corrected herself adroitly:  “I mean, of course, fetch Sir John first.”