“Can’t see why you have to give up the dinner and drive me out of it as well because you have to go down to Apsley to-morrow,” her husband had said when she had written to her hostess excusing their presence at dinner.

“The reason’s obvious,” she replied equably.  “I haven’t had a good night’s rest for a week—­I can’t sleep after eight o’clock in the morning like you do, and I’ve got a woman to deal with to-morrow.  You don’t want to lose the shooting and the hunting down at Apsley, do you?”

“No—­rather not—­of course I don’t.”

“Then let me get a good night’s rest.”

One admires the woman who sees her plan of action and takes it like a sword in the hand.  Certainly, there was a possibility that she might be wrong.  There well might be no woman.  But in her mind, she was confident, and this was the only method of defence.  She did not hesitate to accept it, difficult though it were.  The woman might be any one—­a creature whose touch would be contamination.  She placed no trust in her brother where women were concerned.  He would not actually disgrace her; she could be certain of that.  A calculation on the presence of Mrs. Butterick, the housekeeper, who was always left in charge of the Manor, would be bound to act as a certain restraint.  But what he expected to present a quotient of respectability to Mrs. Butterick and the gardener if he happened to be about the grounds, might well represent sordid vulgarity to her.  He had certainly taken every precaution to be alone.  Yet having drawn all these facts into consideration, she was undaunted.  The whole way down to Apsley, sitting comfortably in the corner of the car, her eyes unseeingly fixed upon the back of the chauffeur’s neck, she rehearsed one scene after another with a precision of imagination that was worthy of a greater cause.  Yet what cause could be greater to her?  With the loss of Apsley, she fell irremediably in social power.  Five thousand pounds would purchase another residence in the country.  But what sort of a residence?  She shuddered and, in a moment of relaxation, became aware that the chauffeur was in need of a clean collar.

The moment she arrived, she sent for Mrs. Butterick and went upstairs to her bedroom.  The good, fat, little woman—­her face a full harvest moon, to which the features adhered with regularity but no expression—­soon followed her.  She stood at the door of the long, lofty room with its three big, latticed windows and beamed upon her mistress.  She loved the quality—­the quality, she always called them.  When the season of week-ends came round each year, she was the proudest of women in the country-side.  At that very moment, she was wearing a silk petticoat, worth its weight in gold, five guineas at the utmost for it seemed like froth in the hand—­which a French lady’s maid had given her in exchange for silence over a little incident that scarcely calls for mention.  The first return of her mistress to Apsley, then, was