woman of parts, and also, he suspected, of property.  At breakfast they had been most pleasant together, and he had been struck by her apparent intimacy with well-known persons.  Victorians, of course; but it was restful to talk about them after the strain of his brother-in-law’s Georgian parties on Hampstead Heath.  He and she were getting on famously, he felt.  She already showed all the symptoms of presently wishing to become a client.  Not for the world would he offend her.  He turned a little cold at the narrowness of his escape.

She had not, however, noticed.

“You are going out,” he said very politely, all readiness should she confirm his assumption to accompany her.

“I want to find Lady Caroline,” said Mrs. Fisher, going towards the glass door leading into the top garden.

“An agreeable quest,” remarked Mr. Wilkins, “May I assist in the search?  Allow me—­” he added, opening the door for her.

“She usually sits over in that corner behind the bushes,” said Mrs. Fisher.  “And I don’t know about it being an agreeable quest.  She has been letting the bills run up in the most terrible fashion, and needs a good scolding.”

“Lady Carline?” said Mr. Wilkins, unable to follow such an attitude.  “What has Lady Caroline, if I may inquire, to do with the bills here?”

“The housekeeping was left to her, and as we all share alike it ought to have been a matter of honour with her—­”

“But—­Lady Caroline housekeeping for the party here?  A party which includes my wife?  My dear lady, you render me speechless.  Do you not know she is the daughter of the Droitwiches?”

“Oh, is that who she is,” said Mrs. Fisher, scrunching heavily over the pebbles towards the hidden corner.  “Well, that accounts for it.  The muddle that man Droitwich made in his department in the war was a national scandal.  It amounted to misappropriation of the public funds.”

“But it is impossible, I assure you, to expect the daughter of the Droitwiches—­” began Mr. Wilkins earnestly.

“The Droitwiches,” interrupted Mrs. Fisher, “are neither here nor there.  Duties undertaken should be performed.  I don’t intend my money to be squandered for the sake of any Droitwiches.”

A headstrong old lady.  Perhaps not so easy to deal with as he had hoped.  But how wealthy.  Only the consciousness of great wealth would make her snap her fingers in this manner at the Droitwiches.  Lotty, on being questioned, had been vague about her circumstances, and had described her house as a mausoleum with gold-fish swimming about in it; but now he was sure she was more than very well off.  Still, he wished he had not joined her at this moment, for he had no sort of desire to be present at such a spectacle as the scolding of Lady Caroline Dester.

Again, however, he was reckoning without Scrap.  Whatever she felt when she looked up and beheld Mr. Wilkins discovering her corner on the very first morning, nothing but angelicness appeared on her face.  She took her feet off the parapet on Mrs. Fisher’s sitting down on it, and listening gravely to her opening remarks as to her not having any money to fling about in reckless and uncontrolled household expenditure, interrupted her flow by pulling one of the cushions from behind her head and offering it to her.