Mrs. Pendyce read the telegram, and she, too, like George, felt sorry for the sender.

“Nothing, thanks, dear Charles,” she said slowly.  “I’m all right.  Horace gets so nervous!”

General Pendyce looked at her; for a moment his eyes flickered, then, since the truth was so improbable and so utterly in any case beyond his philosophy, he accepted her statement.

“He shouldn’t go sending telegrams like this,” he said.  “You might have been ill for all I could tell.  It spoiled my breakfast!” For though, as a fact, it had not prevented his completing a hearty meal, he fancied that he felt hungry.  “When I was quartered at Halifax there was a fellow who never sent anything but telegrams.  Telegraph Jo they called him.  He commanded the old Bluebottles.  You know the old Bluebottles?  If Horace is going to take to this sort of thing he’d better see a specialist; it’s almost certain to mean a breakdown.  You’re up about dresses, I see.  When do you come to town?  The season’s getting on.”

Mrs. Pendyce was not afraid of her husband’s brother, for though punctilious and accustomed to his own way with inferiors, he was hardly a man to inspire awe in his social equals.  It was, therefore, not through fear that she did not tell him the truth, but through an instinct for avoiding all unnecessary suffering too strong for her, and because the truth was really untellable.  Even to herself it seemed slightly ridiculous, and she knew the poor General would take it so dreadfully to heart.

“I don’t know about coming up this season.  The garden is looking so beautiful, and there’s Bee’s engagement.  The dear child is so happy!”

The General caressed a whisker with his white hand.

“Ah yes,” he said—­“young Tharp!  Let’s see, he’s not the eldest.  His brother’s in my old corps.  What does this young fellow do with himself?”

Mrs. Pendyce answered: 

“He’s only farming.  I’m afraid he’ll have nothing to speak of, but he’s a dear good boy.  It’ll be a long engagement.  Of course, there’s nothing in farming, and Horace insists on their having a thousand a year.  It depends so much on Mr. Tharp.  I think they could do perfectly well on seven hundred to start with, don’t you, Charles?”

General Pendyce’s answer was not more conspicuously to the point than usual, for he was a man who loved to pursue his own trains of thought.

“What about George?”, he said.  “I met him in the hall as I was coming in, but he ran off in the very deuce of a hurry.  They told me at Epsom that he was hard hit.”

His eyes, distracted by a fly for which he had taken a dislike, failed to observe his sister-in-law’s face.

“Hard hit?” she repeated.

“Lost a lot of money.  That won’t do, you know, Margery—­that won’t do.  A little mild gambling’s one thing.”

Mrs. Pendyce said nothing; her face was rigid:  It was the face of a woman on the point of saying:  “Do not compel me to hint that you are boring me!”