All the morning she sat beneath the pine-tree by the sea.  Nobody came near her.  The great hours passed slowly; they seemed enormous.  But she wouldn’t go up before lunch, she would give the telegram time to arrive. . .

That day Scrap, egged on by Lotty’s persuasions and also thinking that perhaps she had sat long enough, had arisen from her chair and cushions and gone off with Lotty and sandwiches up into the hills till evening.  Mr. Wilkins, who wished to go with them, stayed on Lady Caroline’s advice with Mrs. Fisher in order to cheer her solitude, and though he left off cheering her about eleven to go and look for Mrs. Arbuthnot, so as for a space to cheer her too, thus dividing himself impartially between the these solitary ladies, he came back again presently mopping his forehead and continued with Mrs. Fisher where he had left off, for this time Mrs. Arbuthnot had hidden successfully.  There was a telegram, too, for her he noticed when he came in.  Pity he did not know where she was.

“Ought we to open it?” he said to Mrs. Fisher.

“No,” said Mrs. Fisher.

“It may require an answer.”

“I don’t approve of tampering with other people’s correspondence.”

“Tampering!  My dear lady—­”

Mr. Wilkins was shocked.  Such a word.  Tampering.  He had the greatest possible esteem for Mrs. Fisher, but he did at times find her a little difficult.  She liked him, he was sure, and she was in a fair way, he felt, to become a client, but he feared she would be a headstrong and secretive client.  She was certainly secretive, for though he had been skilful and sympathetic for a whole week, she had as yet given him no inkling of what was so evidently worrying her.

“Poor old thing,” said Lotty, on his asking her if she perhaps could throw light on Mrs. Fisher’s troubles.  “She hasn’t got love.”

“Love?” Mr. Wilkins could only echo, genuinely scandalized.  “But surely, my dear—­at her age—­”

“Any love,” said Lotty.

That very morning he had asked his wife, for he now sought and respected her opinion, if she could tell him what was the matter with Mrs. Arbuthnot, for she too, though he had done his best to thaw her into confidence, had remained persistently retiring.

“She wants her husband,” said Lotty.

“Ah,” said Mr. Wilkins, a new light shed on Mrs. Arbuthnot’s shy and modest melancholy.  And he added, “Very proper.”

And Lotty said, smiling at him, “One does.”

And Mr. Wilkins said, smiling at her, “Does one?”

And Lotty said, smiling at him, “Of course.”

And Mr. Wilkins, much pleased with her, though it was still quite early in the day, a time when caresses are sluggish, pinched her ear.