“My niece, Miss Tomalin.”  Where on earth did this niece spring from?  Everybody understood that Lady Ogram was alone in the world.  Constance had expressly affirmed it—­yet here was she smiling in the most natural way possible, as if nieces abounded at Rivenoak.  Dyce managed to talk, but he heard not a word from his own lips, and his eyes, fixed on Lady Ogram’s features, noted the indubitable fact that her complexion was artificial.  This astounding old woman, at the age of four score, had begun to paint?  So confused was Dyce’s state of mind. that, on perceiving the truth of the matter, he all but uttered an exclamation.  Perhaps only Miss Tomalin’s voice arrested him.

“My aunt has told me all about your new Socialism, Mr. Lashmar.  You can’t think how it has put my mind at rest!  One has so felt that one ought to be a Socialist, and yet there were so many things one couldn’t accept.  It’s delightful to see everything reconciled—­all one wants to keep and all the new things that must come!”

May had been developing.  She spoke with a confidence which, on softer notes, emulated that of her aged relative; she carried her head with a conscious stateliness which might have been—­perhaps was—­deliberately studied after the portrait in the Rivenoak dining-room.  Harmonious with this change was that in her attire; fashion had done its best to transform the aspiring young provincial into a metropolitan Grace; the result being that Miss Tomalin seemed to have grown in stature, to exhibit a more notable symmetry, so that she filled more space in the observer’s eye than heretofore.  For all that, she looked no older; her self-assertion, though more elaborate, was not a bit more impressive, and the phrases she used, the turn of her sentences, the colour of her speech, very little resembled anything that would have fallen from a damsel bred in the modish world.  Her affectation was shot through with spontaneity; her impertinence had a juvenile seriousness which made it much more amusing than offensive; and a feminine charm in her, striving to prevail over incongruous elements, made clear appeal to the instincts of the other sex.

“That is very encouraging,” was Lashmar’s reply.  “If only one’s thoughts can be of any help to others—­”

“What time is it?” broke in Lady Ogram.  “Why doesn’t that man come?  What business has he to keep us waiting?”

“It’s only just half-past one,” said Miss Bride.

“Then he ought to be here.”  She turned to Lashmar.  “I’m expecting a friend you’ve heard of—­Sir William Amys.  How long are we to sit here waiting for him, I wonder?”

“What do you think of Herbert Spencer, Mr. Lashmar?” inquired May.

Dyce’s reply was rendered doubly unnecessary by the opening of the door, and the announcement of the awaited guest.

“Willy!  Willy!” cried Lady Ogram, with indulgent reproof.  “You always used to be so punctual.”