And she concluded: 

I understand then that we meet at Crewe on Friday fortnight?  I have heard of a lodging near Capel Curig which sounds delightful.  We might do a week’s climbing and then go on to the sea.  I really shall want a holiday.  Has there not been ten minutes even—­since you arrived—­to write a letter in?—­or a postcard?  Shall I send you a few addressed?

Having thus finished what seemed to her the dullest letter she had ever written in her life, she looked at it a while, irresolutely, then put it in an envelope hastily, addressed, stamped it, and rang the bell for Jane to run across the street with it and post it.  After which, she sat idle a little while with flushed cheeks, while the twilight gathered.

* * * * *

The gate of the trim front garden swung on its hinges.  Doris turned to look.  She saw, to her astonishment, that the girl-accountant of the morning, Miss Wigram, was coming up the flagged path to the house.  What could she want?

“Oh, Mrs. Meadows—­I’m so sorry to disturb you—­” said the visitor, in some agitation, as Doris, summoned by Jane, entered the dust-sheeted drawing-room.  “But you dropped an envelope with an address this afternoon.  I picked it up with some of my papers and never discovered it till I got home.”

She held out the envelope.  Doris took it, and flushed vividly.  It was the envelope with his Scotch address which Arthur had written out for her before leaving home—­“care of the Lord Dunstable, Franick Castle, Pitlochry, Perthshire, N.B.”  She had put it in her portfolio, out of which it had no doubt slipped while she was at work.

She and Miss Wigram eyed each other.  The girl was evidently agitated.  But she seemed not to know how to begin what she had to say.

Doris broke the silence.

“You were astonished to find that I know the Dunstables?”

“Oh, no!—­I didn’t think—­” stammered her visitor—­“I supposed some friend of yours might be staying there.”

“My husband is staying there,” said Doris, quietly.  Really it was too much trouble to tell a falsehood.  Her pride refused.

“Oh, I see!” cried Miss Wigram, though in fact she was more bewildered than before.  Why should this extraordinary little lady have behaved at the studio as if she had never heard of the Dunstables, and be now confessing that her husband was actually staying in their house?

Doris smiled—­with perfect self-possession.

“Please sit down.  You think it odd, of course, that I didn’t tell you I knew the Dunstables, while we were talking about them.  The fact is I didn’t want to be mixed up with the affair at all.  We have only lately made acquaintance with the Dunstables.  Lady Dunstable is my husband’s friend.  I don’t like her very much.  But neither of us knows her well enough to go and tell her tales about her son.”