She had come alone.  That, Mrs. Eliott felt, was a bad beginning.  She could see that it struck even Johnson’s obtuseness as unfavourable, for he presently effaced himself.

“Fanny,” said Anne, holding her friend’s evasive eye with the determination of her query, “tell me, who are the Ransomes?”

“The Ransomes?  Have they called?”

“Yes, but I was out.  I didn’t see them.”

“Oh, my dear,” said Mrs. Eliott, in a tone which implied that when Anne did see them——­

“Are they very dreadful?”

“Well—­they’re not your sort.”

Anne meditated.  “Not—­my—­sort.  And the Lawson Hannays, what sort are they?”

“Well, we don’t know them.  But there are a great many people in Scale one doesn’t know.”

“Are they socially impossible, or what?”

“Oh—­socially, they would be considered—­in Scale—­all right.  But he is, or was, mixed up with some very queer people.”

Anne’s cold face intimated that the adjective suggested nothing to her.  Mrs. Eliott was compelled to be explicit.  The word queer was applied in Scale to persons of dubious honesty in business; whereas it was not so much in business as in pleasure that Mr. Lawson Hannay had been queer.

“Mr. Hannay may be very steady now, but I believe he belonged to a very fast set before he married her.”

“And she?  Is she nice?”

“She may be very nice for all I know.”

“I think,” said Anne, “she wouldn’t call if she wasn’t nice, you know.”

She meant that if Mrs. Lawson Hannay hadn’t been nice Walter would never have sanctioned her calling.

“Oh, as for that,” said her friend, “you know what Scale is.  The less nice they are the more they keep on calling.  But I should think”—­she had suddenly perceived where Anne’s argument was tending—­“she is probably all right.”

“Do you know anything of Mr. Charlie Gorst?”

“No.  But Johnson does.  At least I’m sure he’s met him.”

Mrs. Eliott saw it all.  Poor Anne was being besieged, bombarded by her husband’s set.

“Then he isn’t impossible?”

“Oh no, the Gorsts are a very old Lincolnshire family.  Quite grand.  What a number of people you’re going to know, my dear.  But, your husband isn’t to take you away from all your old friends.”

“He isn’t taking me anywhere.  I shall stay,” said Anne proudly, “exactly where I was before.”

She was determined that her old friends should never know to what a sorrowful place she had been taken.

“You dear,” said Mrs. Eliott, holding out a suddenly caressing hand.

Anne trembled a little under the caress.  “Fanny,” said she, “I want you to know him.”

“I mean to,” said Mrs. Eliott hurriedly.

“And I want him, even more, to know you.”

“Then,” Mrs. Elliot argued to herself, “she knows nothing; or she never could suppose we would be kindred spirits.”