It is scarcely possible to see how this is arrived at; yet, to the mind of a woman, it is simple enough.  Her brother had, after all these years, breasted his way out of the slow-moving tide of mental indifference, into the rapid current of ambition.  When a man does that, her intuition prompted her to know that it is more than likely that he brings a woman with him.  It is always possible for a woman to recognize—­apart from her own identity—­that her sex is an encumbrance to most men which they cannot easily shake off.  Witness the generous criticism of a woman upon any husband but her own.  Combine with this intuitive knowledge the fact—­hitherto unrecorded, even by Traill to Sally—­that when he handed over Apsley Manor to his sister and took her ready money in exchange, Traill had made her sign a document granting him the right to repurchase possession with the same amount at any time that it might please him, and you have the apprehension of the woman who knows that possession constitutes but few points of the law when there is ink and parchment to nullify the whole transaction.

Jack, with a woman at his heels; a woman, moreover, whom he had probably brought with him out of that dark abyss of the past; might quite easily be a crushing blow to all her social power.  Five thousand pounds perhaps would be a difficult sum for him to raise—­certainly to raise immediately—­but she had the proof before her that he was striding into eminence and, as has been mentioned before in this chapter, England is the only country in Europe which is a safe harbour for the Jews.

So then she leapt to the conclusion.  He was bringing a woman with him to see the place.  She pictured the creature vividly in her mind—­a woman with a large hat, red lips, a woman with a bold figure who knew how to dress it brazenly, with eyes that danced to the whip of his remarks; a woman who as mistress of Apsley, would make it impossible for her ever to go near the place again.  There was only one way to meet the situation—­a situation it had definitely become in the sudden workings of her mind—­and that was face to face, at Apsley, in possession, with the servants at her command and the most gracious of speeches on her lips.  Tramping through the house alone, that woman would be assigning rooms to their different owners, as if she were already in possession; but with Mrs. Durlacher, the perfect artist, as Jack had called her—­she laughed unfeelingly when that phrase came back to her mind—­with herself at the woman’s heels, telling her what they did with this room and how in the hunting season they used that, there would be little scope for exhibition of the proprietary sentiment and, whoever the person might be, Mrs. Durlacher guaranteed she should not shine on that occasion before her brother.

For that day, then, she had cancelled all her engagements.  The opening of the bazaar, a function at which she had felt it her duty to be present, she crossed out of her book.  From the dinner, to which she and her husband had been asked on the evening previous to Traill’s visit to Apsley, she wrote and excused herself, saying she had been called out of Town; and on the next morning she had ordered the car to be round at the house in Sloane Street punctually at a quarter to ten.