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Rh too heavy to hold, and she herself was inclined to be sleepy after her walk in the morning, her swift drive home in air which was becoming chill with imminent rain, and with the warmth of the room in which she sat. So, instead of following the travellers to Japan, she dozed in her chair, and from dozing passed into sleep.

The room where she sat was of gallery shape, seventy feet long, and broken up by big screens, so that groups could be formed round the piano in the centre, or by either of the fireplaces, which stood at the two ends of the place. At either end was a door, the one communicating with the hall, the other with the drawing-room. It was at this end, comfortably ensconced behind a screen, that Cathie had settled herself.

She slept for half an hour or so, and woke to find that it was growing dark. She was quite rested by her nap, but sat a moment longer without moving, looking at the firelight flickering on the bookcases and panelled walls. It was all Lucia's, too. Then a little distance off, on the other side of the screen which sheltered her, she heard a woman's laugh. Then somebody, a man, spoke.

"Anything diviner than the crisis about the Mayor's daughter I never heard," he said. "She told it all over again at lunch. It is really like a page of 'Cranford.

The voice was very distinct: it was Harry's. She hardly grasped the meaning at once.

Then a woman spoke.

"Dear Lucia is quite furious," she said. "She told me she did all she could to put her off, but Edgar wouldn't. Oh, and she tried to be diplomatic about the puce silk, and thought she had succeeded. Not a bit of it, though. She thought of telling a footman to spill something on it—something moist and green—so that it could not appear again. How heavenly that people should have aunts like that!"

She recognized the voice: it was Mouse's.

"Yes, most heavenly; but it is important that other people should have them, and not oneself."

"Quite so. Harry, I must get the story of the Mayor's daughter once more, and I do hope she will wear the puce again. It killed Jiminy's pink quite, quite dead. The pink gave one sigh, and never moved again. And Raikes tells me she has the most wonderful maid, about eighty, who appeared in the room last night in white braces and an apron like the parlourmaid in a play. And the bridge! Didn't you hear? She said she