Saved by the fervour of this determination from brooding over mysteries and jealousies, Alma lay down with a contented sigh, and was soon asleep, thanks to the health she still enjoyed.  Her excitability was of the imagination rather than of the blood, and the cool, lymphatic flow, characteristically feminine, which mingled with the sanguine humour, traceable perhaps to a paternal source, spared her many an hour of wakefulness, as it guarded her against much graver peril.

On Sunday morning she generally went to church —­ not because of any spiritual impulse, but out of habit.  In Wales, Harvey often accompanied her; at Pinner he ceased to do so; but neither then nor now had any talk on the subject passed between them.  Alma took it for granted that her husband was very ‘broad’ in matters of faith.  She gathered from her reading that every man of education nowadays dispensed with dogmas, and, for her own part, it was merely an accident that she had not sought to attract attention by pronounced freethinking.  Sibyl Carnaby went to church as a matter of course, and never spoke for or against orthodoxy.  Had Sibyl been more ‘advanced’ in this direction, undoubtedly Alma would long ago have followed her example.  Both of them, in girlhood, had passed through a great deal of direct religious teaching —­ and both would have shrunk amazed if called upon to make the slightest sacrifice in the name of their presumed creed.

This morning, however, Alma remained at home, and one of the first things she did was to write to Sibyl, asking when it would be convenient for her friend to give her half-an-hour’s private talk.  Then she wrote to Felix Dymes, addressing the letter to the care of his publishers.  At midday, as Harvey had gone to town on his business with Cecil Morphew, she decided to run over to Kingsbury-Neasden and ask her friends for lunch, in return for which she would make known to them her startling project.  It was a wretched day; Hughie must not go out, and Pauline —­ good creature —­ would amuse him in one way and another all the afternoon.

As it chanced, her surprise visit could not have been worse timed, for Mrs. Leach was in a state of collapse after a violent quarrel, the day before, with her cook-housekeeper, who quitted the house at a moment’s notice.  Luncheon, in the admissible sense of the word, there was none to be had.  Mr. Leach, finding the house intolerable when he arrived on Saturday afternoon, had gone back to his bachelor quarters, and the girls, when Alma presented herself, were just sitting down alone to what the housemaid chose to give them.  But such an old friend could not be turned away because of domestic mishap.

Not until they had despatched the unsatisfactory meal, and were cosy in the drawing-room, did Alma reveal her great purpose.  Dora Leach happened to have a slight acquaintance with a professional pianist who had recently come before the public, and Alma began by inquiring whether her friend could obtain information as to the expenses of the first ‘recital’ given by that lady.