was not the rainy day Mellersh—­Mellersh was Mr. Wilkins—­had so often encouraged her to prepare for, and whether to get out of such a climate and into the small mediaeval castle wasn’t perhaps what Providence had all along intended her to do with her savings.  Part of her savings, of course; perhaps quite a small part.  The castle, being mediaeval, might also be dilapidated, and dilapidations were surely cheap.  She wouldn’t in the lest mind a few of them, because you didn’t pay for dilapidations which were already there, on the contrary—­by reducing the price you had to pay they really paid you.  But what nonsense to think of it . . .

She turned away from the window with the same gesture of mingled irritation and resignation with which she had laid down The Times, and crossed the room towards the door with the intention of getting her mackintosh and umbrella and fighting her way into one of the overcrowded omnibuses and going to Shoolbred’s on her way home and buying some soles for Mellersh’s dinner—­Mellersh was difficult with fish and liked only soles, except salmon—­when she beheld Mrs. Arbuthnot, a woman she knew by sight as also living in Hampstead and belonging to the club, sitting at the table in the middle of the room on which the newspapers and magazines were kept, absorbed, in her turn, in the first page of The Times.

Mrs. Wilkins had never yet spoken to Mrs. Arbuthnot, who belonged to one of the various church sets, and who analysed, classified, divided and registered the poor; whereas she and Mellersh, when they did go out, went to the parties of impressionist painters, of whom in Hampstead there were many.  Mellersh had a sister who had married one of them and lived up on the Heath, and because of this alliance Mrs. Wilkins was drawn into a circle which was highly unnatural to her, and she had learned to dread pictures.  She had to say things about them, and she didn’t know what to say.  She used to murmur, “marvelous,” and feel that it was not enough.  But nobody minded.  Nobody listened.  Nobody took any notice of Mrs. Wilkins.  She was the kind of person who is not noticed at parties.  Her clothes, infested by thrift, made her practically invisible; her face was non-arresting; her conversation was reluctant; she was shy.  And if one’s clothes and face and conversation are all negligible, thought Mrs. Wilkins, who recognized her disabilities, what, at parties, is there left of one?

Also she was always with Wilkins, that clean-shaven, fine-looking man, who gave a party, merely by coming to it, a great air.  Wilkins was very respectable.  He was known to be highly thought of by his senior partners.  His sister’s circle admired him.  He pronounced adequately intelligent judgments on art and artists.  He was pithy; he was prudent; he never said a word too much, nor, on the other had, did he ever say a word too little.  He produced the impression of keeping copies of everything he said; and he was so obviously reliable that it often happened that people who met him at these parties became discontented with their own solicitors, and after a period of restlessness extricated themselves and went to Wilkins.