“If they knew I was Lady Southminster in there,” said Lady Southminster in a feverish murmur—­she seemed not averse to the sensation caused by her hair in the twilight of the hotel—­“I expect I should lose my place, and I don’t want to lose it. He’ll be coming by presently, and he’ll see me, and it’ll be a lesson to him.  We’re always together.  Race meetings, dances, golf, restaurants, bridge.  Twenty-four hours every day.  He won’t lose sight of me.  He’s that fond of me, you know.  I couldn’t stand it.  I’d as lief be in prison—­only I’m that fond of him, you know.  But I was so homesick, and I felt if I didn’t have a change I should burst.  This is Constantinopoulos’s old shop, you know, where I used to make cigarettes in the window.  He’s dead, Constantinopoulos is.  I don’t know what he’d have said to hair restorers.  I asked for the place, and I showed ’em my hair, and I got it.  And me sitting there—­it’s quite like old times.  Only before, you know, I used to have my face to the street.  I don’t know which I like best.  But, anyhow, you can see my profile from the side window.  And he will.  He always looks at that sort of thing.  He’ll be furious.  But it will do him no end of good.  Well, good-bye.  But come back in and buy a bottle, or I shall be let in for a shindy.  In fact, you might buy two bottles.”

“So that’s love!” said Audrey when the transaction was over and they were in the entrance-hall again.

“No,” said Miss Ingate.  “That’s marriage.  And don’t you forget it....  Hallo, Tommy!”

“You’d better not let Mr. Gilman hear me called Tommy in this hotel,” laughed Miss Thompkins, who was attired with an unusual richness, as she advanced towards Miss Ingate and Audrey.  “And what are you doing here?” she questioned Audrey.

“I’m staying here,” said Audrey.  “But I’ve only just arrived.  I’m advance agent for my husband.  How are you?  And what are you doing here?  I thought you hated London.”

“I came the day before yesterday,” Tommy replied.  “And I’m very fit.  You see, Mr. Gilman preferred us to be married in London.  And I’d no objection.  So here I am.  The wedding’s to-morrow.  You aren’t very startled, are you?  Had you heard?”

“Well,” said Audrey, “not what you’d call ‘heard.’  But I’d a sort of a kind of a—­”

“You come right over here, young woman.”

“But I want to get my number.”

“You come right over here right now,” Tommy insisted.  And in another corner of the entrance-hall she spoke thus, and there was both seriousness and fun in her voice:  “Don’t you run away with the idea that I’m taking your leavings, young woman.  Because I’m not.  We all knew you’d lost your head about Musa, and it was quite right of you.  But you never had a chance with Ernest, though you thought you had, after I’d met him.  Admit I’m much better suited for him than you’d have been.  I’d only one difficulty, and that was the nice boy Price, who wanted to drown himself for my beautiful freckled face.  That’s all.  Now you can go and get your number.”