“The poor thing wants to be something out of the common and can’t quite manage it,” she mentally decided, while she viewed with extreme disfavour the feline elegance affected by Mr. Marius Longford, and the sleek smile, practised by him ‘for women only,’ with which he blandly admitted her existence.  To Miss Tabitha Pippit she offered a chair of capacious dimensions, amply provided with large down cushons, inviting her to sit down in it with a gentleness which implied kindly consideration for her years and for the fatigue she might possibly experience as a result of the drive over from Badsworth Hall,—­whereat the severe spinster’s chronically red nose reddened more visibly, and between her thin lips she sharply enunciated her preference for ’a higher seat,—­no cushions, thank you!’ Thereupon she selected the ‘higher seat’ for herself, in the shape of an old-fashioned music-stool, without back or arm-rest, and sat stiffly upon it like a draper’s clothed dummy put up in a window for public inspection.  Maryllia smiled,—­she knew that kind of woman well;—­and paying only the most casual attention to her for the rest of the time, returned to her own place by the open windows and began to dispense the tea, while Sir Morton Pippitt opened conversation by feigning to recall having met her some two or three years back.  He was not altogether in the best of humours, the sight of his recently dismissed butler, Primmins, having upset his nerves.  He knew how servants ‘talked.’  Who could tell what Primmins might not say in his new situation at Abbot’s Manor, of his former experiences at Badsworth Hall?  And so it was with a somewhat heated countenance that Sir Morton endeavoured to allude to a former acquaintance with his hostess at a Foreign Office function.

“Oh no, I don’t think so,” said Maryllia, lazily dropping lumps of sugar into the tea-cups—­“Do you take sugar?  I ought to ask, I know,—­such a number of men have the gout nowadays, and they take saccharine.  I haven’t any saccharine,—­so sorry!  You do like sugar, Mr. Adderley?  How nice of you!” And she smiled.  “None for you, Mr. Longford?  I thought not.  You, Miss Pippitt?  No!  Everybody else, yes?  That’s all right!  The Foreign Office?  I think not, Sir Morton,—­I gave up going there long ago when I was quite young.  My aunt, Mrs. Fred Vancourt, always went—­you must have met her and taken her for me, I always hated a Foreign Office ‘crush.’  Such big receptions bore one terribly—­you never see anybody you really want to know, and the Prime Minister always looks tired to death.  His face is a study in several agonies.  Two or three years ago?  Oh no,—­I don’t think I was in London at that time.  And you were there, were you?  Really!”

She handed a cup of tea with a bewitching smile and a ’Will you kindly pass it?’ to Julian Adderley, who so impetuously accepted the task she imposed upon him of acting as general waiter to the company, that in hastening towards her he caught his foot in the trailing laces of her gown and nearly fell over the tea-tray.