“Mr. Ingram will be there on Tuesday evening,” said Lavender to his wife.

“I was not aware he knew them,” said Sheila, remembering, indeed, how scrupulously Ingram had refused to know them.

“He has made their acquaintance for his own purposes, doubtless,” said Lavender.  “I suppose he will appear in a frock-coat, with a bright blue tie, and he will say ‘Sir’ to the waiters when he does not understand them.”

“I thought you said Mr. Ingram belonged to a very good family,” said Sheila quietly.

“That is so.  But each man is responsible for his own manners; and as all the society he sees consists of a cat and some wooden pipes in a couple of dingy rooms in Sloane street, you can’t expect him not to make an ass of himself.”

“I have never seen him make himself ridiculous:  I do not think it possible,” said Sheila, with a certain precision of speech which Lavender had got to know meant much.  “But that is a matter for himself.  Perhaps you will tell me what I am to do when I meet him at Mrs. Kavanagh’s house.”

“Of course you must meet him as you would any one else you know.  If you don’t wish to speak to him, you need not do so.  Saying ‘Good-evening’ costs nothing.”

“If he takes me into dinner?” she asked calmly.

“Then you must talk to him as you would to any stranger,” he said impatiently.  “Ask him if he has been to the opera, and he won’t know there is no opera going on.  Tell him that town is very full, and he won’t know that everybody has left.  Say you may meet him again at Mrs. Kavanagh’s, and you’ll see that he doesn’t know they mean to start for the Tyrol in a fortnight.  I think you and I must also be settling soon where we mean to go.  I don’t think we could do better than go to the Tyrol.”

She did not answer.  It was clear that he had given up all intention of going up to Lewis, for that year at least.  But she would not beg him to alter his decision just yet.  Mairi was coming, and that experiment of the enchanted room had still to be tried.

As they drove round to Mrs. Kavanagh’s house on that Tuesday evening, she thought, with much bitterness of heart, of the possibility of her having to meet Mr. Ingram in the fashion her husband had suggested.  Would it not be better, if he did take her in to dinner, to throw herself entirely on his mercy, and ask him not to talk to her at all?  She would address herself, when there was a chance, to her neighbor on the other side:  if she remained silent altogether, no great harm would be done.

When she went into the drawing-room her first glance round was for him, and he was the first person whom she saw; for, instead of withdrawing into a corner to make one neighbor the victim of his shyness, or concealing his embarrassment in studying the photographic albums, Mr. Ingram was coolly standing on the hearth-rug, with both hands in his trousers pockets, while he was engaged in giving the American judge a great deal of authoritative information about America.  The judge was a tall, fair, stout, good-natured man, fond of joking and a good dinner, and he was content at this moment to sit quietly in an easy-chair, with a pleasant smile on his face, and be lectured about his own country by this sallow little man, whom he took to be a professor of modern history at some college or other.