"Isaac," said Lady Harman, leaning forward and then in a low penetrating whisper, "_Snagsby!_"

(It was the name of the great butler.)

"_d.a.m.n_ Snagsby!" hissed Sir Isaac, but dropping his voice and drawing near to her. What his voice lost in height it gained in intensity. "What I say is this, Ella, you oughtn't to have brought that old woman out into the garden at all----"

"She insisted on coming."

"You ought to have snubbed her. You ought to have done--anything. How the Devil was I to get away, once she was through the verandah? There I was! _Bagged!_"

"You could have come forward."

"What! And meet _her_!"

"_I_ had to meet her."

Sir Isaac felt that his rage was being frittered away upon details. "If you hadn't gone fooling about looking at houses," he said, and now he stood very close to her and spoke with a confidential intensity, "you wouldn't have got that Holy Terror on our track, see? And now--here we are!"

He walked past her into the hall, and the little manservant suddenly materialised in the middle of the s.p.a.ce and came forward to brush him obsequiously. Lady Harman regarded that proceeding for some moments in a preoccupied manner and then pa.s.sed slowly into the cla.s.sical conservatory. She felt that in view of her engagements the discussion of Lady Beach-Mandarin was only just beginning.

--7

She reopened it herself in the long drawing-room into which they both drifted after Sir Isaac had washed the mould from his hands. She went to a French window, gathered courage, it seemed, by a brief contemplation of the garden, and turned with a little effort.

"I don't agree," she said, "with you about Lady Beach-Mandarin."

Sir Isaac appeared surprised. He had a.s.sumed the incident was closed.

"_How?_" he asked compactly.

"I don't agree," said Lady Harman. "She seems friendly and jolly."

"She's a Holy Terror," said Sir Isaac. "I've seen her twice, Lady Harman."

"A call of that kind," his wife went on, "--when there are cards left and so on--has to be returned."

"You won't," said Sir Isaac.

Lady Harman took a blind-ta.s.sel in her hand,--she felt she had to hold on to something. "In any case," she said, "I should have to do that."

"In any case?"

She nodded. "It would be ridiculous not to. We----It is why we know so few people--because we don't return calls...."

Sir Isaac paused before answering. "We don't _want_ to know a lot of people," he said. "And, besides----Why! anybody could make us go running about all over London calling on them, by just coming and calling on us.

No sense in it. She's come and she's gone, and there's an end of it."

"No," said Lady Harman, gripping her ta.s.sel more firmly. "I shall have to return that call."

"I tell you, you won't."

"It isn't only a call," said Lady Harman. "You see, I promised to go there to lunch."

"Lunch!"

"And to go to a meeting with her."

"Go to a meeting!"

"--of a society called the Social Friends. And something else. Oh! to go to the committee meetings of her Shakespear Dinners Movement."

"I've heard of that."

"She said you supported it--or else of course...."

Sir Isaac restrained himself with difficulty.

"Well," he said at last, "you'd better write and tell her you can't do any of these things; that's all."

He thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and walked to the French window next to the one in which she stood, with an air of having settled this business completely, and being now free for the tranquil contemplation of horticulture. But Lady Harman had still something to say.

"I am going to _all_ these things," she said. "I said I would, and I will."

He didn't seem immediately to hear her. He made the little noise with his teeth that was habitual to him. Then he came towards her. "This is your infernal sister," he said.

Lady Harman reflected. "No," she decided. "It's myself."

"I might have known when we asked her here," said Sir Isaac with an habitual disregard of her judgments that was beginning to irritate her more and more. "You can't take on all these people. They're not the sort of people we want to know."

"I want to know them," said Lady Harman.

"I don't."

"I find them interesting," Lady Harman said. "And I've promised."

"Well you oughtn't to have promised without consulting me."

Her reply was the material of much subsequent reflection on the part of Sir Isaac. There was something in her manner....

"You see, Isaac," she said, "you kept so out of the way...."

In the pause that followed her words, Mrs. Sawbridge appeared from the garden smiling with a determined amiability, and bearing a great bunch of the best roses (which Sir Isaac hated to have picked) in her hands.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

THE BEGINNINGS OF LADY HARMAN