What perfect tact.  Mr. Wilkins could have worshipped her.  This exquisite ignoring.  Blue blood, of course, coming out.

Overwhelmed with gratitude he took her offered hand and said “How do you do,” in his turn, and merely to repeat the ordinary words seemed magically to restore the situation to the normal.  Indeed, he was so much relieved, and it was so natural to be shaking hands, to be conventionally greeting, that he forgot he had only a towel on and his professional manner came back to him.  He forgot what he was looking like, but he did not forget that this was Lady Caroline Dester, the lady he had come all the way to Italy to see, and he did not forget that it was in her face, her lovely and important face, that he had flung his terrible exclamation.  He must at once entreat her forgiveness.  To say such a word to a lady—­to any lady, but of all ladies to just this one . . .

“I’m afraid I used unpardonable language,” began Mr. Wilkins very earnestly, as earnestly and ceremoniously as if he had had his clothes on.

“I thought it most appropriate,” said Scrap, who was used to damns.

Mr. Wilkins was incredibly relieved and soothed by this answer.  No offence, then, taken.  Blue blood again.  Only blue blood could afford such a liberal, such an understanding attitude.

“It is Lady Caroline Dester, is it not, to whom I am speaking?” he asked, his voice sounding even more carefully cultivated than usual, for he had to restrain too much pleasure, too much relief, too much of the joy of the pardoned and the shriven from getting into it.

“Yes,” said Scrap; and for the life of her she couldn’t help smiling.  She couldn’t help it.  She hadn’t meant to smile at Mr. Wilkins, not ever; but really he looked—­and then his voice was the top of the rest of him, oblivious of the towel and his legs, and talking just like a church.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” said Mr. Wilkins, with the ceremony of the drawing-room.  “My name is Mellersh-Wilkins.”

And he instinctively held out his hand a second time at the words.

“I thought perhaps it was,” said Scrap, a second time having hers shaken and a second time unable not to smile.

He was about to proceed to the first of the graceful tributes he had prepared in the train, oblivious, as he could not see himself, that he was without his clothes, when the servants came running up the stairs and, simultaneously, Mrs. Fisher appeared in the doorway of her sitting-room.  For all this had happened very quickly, and the servants away in the kitchen, and Mrs. Fisher pacing her battlements, had not had time on hearing the noise to appear before the second handshake.

The servants when they heard the dreaded noise knew at once what had happened, and rushed straight into the bathroom to try and staunch the flood, taking no notice of the figure on the landing in the towel, but Mrs. Fisher did not know what the noise could be, and coming out of her room to inquire stood rooted on the door-sill.