‘Thank you,’ was the rather feeble answer.  ’But I shall have to leave pretty early.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ said Stanway.  ’You can take Mr. Twemlow and the girls, Nora, and I’ll follow as quick as I can.  I must dictate a letter or two.’

The three women, Twemlow in the midst, escaped like a pretty cloud out of the rude, dingy office, and their bright voices echoed diminuendo down the stair.  Stanway rang his bell fiercely.  The dictionary and the letter and Ethel’s paper lay forgotten on the dusty table of the inner room.

* * * * *

Arthur Twemlow felt that he ought to have been annoyed, but he could do no more than keep up a certain reserve of manner.  Neither the memory of his humiliating clumsy lies about his sister in broaching the matter of his father’s estate to Stanway, nor his clear perception that Stanway was a dishonest and a frightened man, nor his strong theoretical objection to Stanway’s tactics in so urgently inviting him to tea, could overpower the sensation of spiritual comfort and complacency which possessed him as he sat between Leonora and Ethel at Leonora’s splendidly laden table.  He fought doggedly against this sensation.  He tried to assume the attitude of a philosopher observing humanity, of a spider watching flies; he tried to be critical, cold, aloof.  He listened as one set apart, and answered in monosyllables.  But despite his own volition the monosyllables were accompanied by a smile that destroyed the effect of their curtness.  The intimate charm of the domesticity subdued his logical antipathies.  He knew that he was making a good impression among these women, that for them there was something romantic and exciting about his history and personality.  And he liked them all.  He liked even Rose, so pale, strange, and contentious.  In regard to Milly, whom he had begun by despising, he silently admitted that a girl so vivacious, supple, sparkling, and pretty, had the right to be as pertly foolish as she chose.  He took a direct fancy to Ethel.  And he decided once for ever that Leonora was a magnificent creature.

In the play of conversation on domestic trifles, the most ordinary phrases seemed to him to be charged with a peculiar fascination.  The little discussions about Milly’s attempts at housekeeping, about the austere exertions of Rose, Ethel’s first day at the office, Bran’s new biscuits, the end of the lawn-tennis season, the propriety of hockey for girls, were so mysteriously pleasant to his ears that he felt it a sort of privilege to have been admitted to them.  And yet he clearly perceived the shortcomings of each person in this little world of which the totality was so delightful.  He knew that Ethel was languidly futile, Rose cantankerous, Milly inane, Stanway himself crafty and meretricious, and Leonora often supine when she should not be.  He dwelt specially on the more odious aspects of Stanway’s character, and swore that, had Stanway forty womenfolk instead of four, he, Arthur Twemlow, should still do his obvious duty of finishing what he had begun.  In chatting with his host after tea, he marked his own attitude with much care, and though Stanway pretended not to observe it, he knew that Stanway observed it well enough.