The bishop suddenly asked: 

“If somebody you knew had committed a crime, what would you say?  Somebody you really respect—­a person like Mrs. Meadows?”

“Your cousin?  I should say that whatever Mrs. Meadows does is well done.”

“You would approve?”

“Of course I would.  People like that are bound to be in the right.”

“Really . . . ?”

The fireworks were splendid; altogether, Saint Eulalia’s day proved a tremendous success.  The festal joy was only marred by the unseemly behaviour of Miss Wilberforce, who profited by the occasion to let off some fireworks, or at least steam, of her own.

In broad daylight too.

This was something new, and rather ominous.

The dear lady was becoming quite a problem.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Men looked down from the market-place that afternoon and beheld a gaily-coloured throng moving about Madame Steynlin’s awkwardly situated promontory.  Her house and its wide terrace overhanging the sea were filled with guests.  The entertainment differed from the receptions of the Duchess.  It was more rustic and unrestrained—­more in the nature of a picnic.  Everything possible had been done to convert that tongue of land, that refractory stretch of trachyte, into a garden.  Paths were blasted through the rock; those few scarred olives, the aboriginals, had been supplanted by whatever flowers and shade-giving trees could be induced, with assiduous waterings, to strike roots into the arid soil.  It was still rather a transparent place.

A number of new people had lately arrived on Nepenthe in favour of whom the hostess, with the frank cordiality of her nature, had issued invitations broadcast.  There was the celebrated R. A. and his dowdy wife; a group of American politicians who were supposed to be reporting on economic questions and spent the Government’s money in carousing about Europe; Madame Albert, the lady doctor from Lyons whose unique combination of magic and massage (a family secret) had brought the expiring Prince of Philippopolis to life again; an Italian senator with his two pretty daughters; a bluff hilarious Scotchman, Mr. Jameson, who, as a matter of fact, had done seven years for forgery but did not like to have it brought up against him; some sisters of charity; a grizzled sea-captain who was making discreet enquiries about a safe place for a shipwreck, having been promised by the owners twenty per cent of his vessel’s insurance money; a dilapidated Viscount and his SOI-distant niece; two fluffy Danish ladies who always travelled together and smiled at everything, though the younger one smiled in such a horrible knowing fashion that you could not help disliking her; Mrs. Roger Rumbold who addressed meetings to advocate Infanticide for the Masses; Mr. Bernard of the Entomological Society-author of the courtship of cockroaches; another young man of pleasant exterior who was held to be an architect because his brother used to be employed in a well-known engineering firm, and several more.