At table, as it happened, from next morning’s breakfast the Meadowcrofts sat next to us.  Hilda was on one side of me; Lady Meadowcroft on the other; and beyond her again, bluff Yorkshire Sir Ivor, with his cold, hard, honest blue North Country eyes, and his dignified, pompous English, breaking down at times into a North Country colloquialism.  They talked chiefly to each other.  Acting on Hilda’s instructions, I took care not to engage in conversation with our “exclusive” neighbour, except so far as the absolute necessities of the table compelled me.  I “troubled her for the salt” in the most frigid voice.  “May I pass you the potato salad?” became on my lips a barrier of separation.  Lady Meadowcroft marked and wondered.  People of her sort are so anxious to ingratiate themselves with “all the Best People” that if they find you are wholly unconcerned about the privilege of conversation with a “titled person,” they instantly judge you to be a distinguished character.  As the days rolled on, Lady Meadowcroft’s voice began to melt by degrees.  Once, she asked me, quite civilly, to send round the ice; she even saluted me on the third day out with a polite “Good-morning, doctor.”

Still, I maintained (by Hilda’s advice) my dignified reserve, and took my seat severely with a cold “Good-morning.”  I behaved like a high-class consultant, who expects to be made Physician in Ordinary to Her Majesty.

At lunch that day, Hilda played her first card with delicious unconsciousness—­apparent unconsciousness; for, when she chose, she was a consummate actress.  She played it at a moment when Lady Meadowcroft, who by this time was burning with curiosity on our account, had paused from her talk with her husband to listen to us.  I happened to say something about some Oriental curios belonging to an aunt of mine in London.  Hilda seized the opportunity.  “What did you say was her name?” she asked, blandly.

“Why, Lady Tepping,” I answered, in perfect innocence.  “She has a fancy for these things, you know.  She brought a lot of them home with her from Burma.”

As a matter of fact, as I have already explained, my poor dear aunt is an extremely commonplace old Army widow, whose husband happened to get knighted among the New Year’s honours for some brush with the natives on the Shan frontier.  But Lady Meadowcroft was at the stage where a title is a title; and the discovery that I was the nephew of a “titled person” evidently interested her.  I could feel rather than see that she glanced significantly aside at Sir Ivor, and that Sir Ivor in return made a little movement of his shoulders equivalent to “I told you so.”

Now Hilda knew perfectly well that the aunt of whom I spoke was Lady Tepping; so I felt sure that she had played this card of malice prepense, to pique Lady Meadowcroft.

But Lady Meadowcroft herself seized the occasion with inartistic avidity.  She had hardly addressed us as yet.  At the sound of the magic passport, she pricked up her ears, and turned to me suddenly.  “Burma?” she said, as if to conceal the true reason for her change of front.  “Burma?  I had a cousin there once.  He was in the Gloucestershire Regiment.”