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184 flowers in quite another part of the garden, and tell him what was the best treatment for their anæmic condition. Pleasant and proper though it was to each of them that Mr. Wyse should pay so little attention to the other, it was bitter as the endive salad to both that he should tolerate, if not enjoy, the companionship which the forwardness of Susan forced on him, and while they absently stared at the fuchsias, the fire kindled, and Elizabeth spake with her tongue.

“How very plain poor Susan looks to-day,” she said. “Such a colour, though to be sure I attribute that more to what she ate and drank than to anything else. Crimson. Oh, those poor fuchsias! I think I should throw them away.”

The common antagonism, Diva felt, had drawn her and Elizabeth into the most cordial of understandings. For the moment she felt nothing but enthusiastic sympathy with Elizabeth, in spite of her kingfisher-blue gown.... What on earth, in parenthesis, was she to do with hers? She could not give it to Janet: it was impossible to contemplate the idea of Janet walking about the High Street in a tea-gown of kingfisher-blue just in order to thwart Elizabeth....

“Mr. Wyse seems taken with her,” said Diva. “How he can! Rather a snob. M.B.E. She’s always popping in here. Saw her yesterday going round the corner of the street.”

“What time, dear?” asked Elizabeth, nosing the scent.

“Middle of the morning.”

“And I saw her in the afternoon,” said Elizabeth. “That great lumbering Rolls-Royce went tacking and skidding round the corner below my garden-room.”