1

"Tea is in the library, miss."

This announcement, together with Partridge's extraordinary increase of importance, would have told her that the master had returned, even if she had not seen, through the half-open door of the cloak-room, Mr. Waddington's overcoat hanging by its shoulders and surmounted by his grey slouch hat.

With a rapid, furtive movement the butler closed the door on these sanctities; and she noted the subdued quiet of his footsteps as he led the way down the dark oak-panelled corridor, through the smoke-room, and into the library beyond. She also caught a surprising sight of her own face in the glass over the smoke-room chimneypiece, her dark eyes shining, the cool, wind-beaten flush on her young cheeks, the curled mouth flowering, geranium red on rose white.

This Barbara of the looking-glass smiled at her in passing with such gay, irresponsible amusement that it fairly took her breath away. Its origin became clear to her as Ralph Bevan's words shot into her mind: "I don't want to spoil him for you." She foresaw a possible intimacy in which Horatio Bysshe Waddington would become the unique though unofficial tie between them. She was aware that it pleased her to share a secret jest with Ralph Bevan.

She found Fanny established behind her tea-table in the low room, dim with its oak panelling above the long lines of the bookcases, where Fanny's fluttering smile made movement and a sort of light.

Her husband sat facing her in his brown leather chair and in the pose, the wonderful pose of his portrait; only the sobriety of his navy-blue serge had fined it down, giving him a factitious slenderness. He hadn't seen her come in. He sat there in innocence and unawareness; and afterwards it gave her a little pang of remorse remembering how innocent he had then seemed to her and unaware.

"This is my husband, Barbara. Horatio, you haven't met Miss Madden."

His eyes bulged with the startled innocence of a creature taken unaware. He had just lifted his face, with its dripping moustache, from his teacup, and though he carried off this awkwardness with an unabashed sweep of his pocket-handkerchief, you could see that he was sensitive; he hated you to catch him in any gesture that was less than noble. All his gestures were noble and his attitudes. He was noble as he got up, slowly, unfolding his great height, tightening by a movement of his shoulders his great breadth. He looked down at her superbly and held out his hand; it closed on hers in a large genial clasp.

"So this is my secretary, is it?"

"Yes. And don't forget she's my companion as well as your secretary."

"I never forget anything that you wish me to remember." (Only he said "nevah" and "remembah"; he bowed as he said it in a very courtly way.)

Barbara noticed that his black hair and moustache were lightly grizzled, there was loose flesh about his eyelids, his chin had doubled, and his cheeks were sagging from the bone, otherwise he was exactly like his portrait; these changes made him look, if anything, more incorruptibly dignified and more solemn. He had remained on his feet (for his breeding was perfect), moving between the tea-table and Barbara, bringing her tea, milk and sugar, and things to eat. Altogether he was so simple, so genial and unmysterious that Barbara could only suppose that Ralph had been making fun of her, of her wonder, her curiosity.

"My dear, what a colour you've got!"

Fanny put up her hands to her own cheeks to draw attention to Barbara's. "You are growing a country girl, aren't you? You should have seen her white face when she came, Horatio."

"What has she been doing to herself?" He had settled again into his chair and his attitude.

"She's been out walking with Ralph."

"With Ralph? Is he here still?"

"Why shouldn't he be?"

Mr. Waddington shrugged his immense shoulders. "It's a question of taste. If he likes to hang about the place after his behaviour—"

"Poor boy! whatever has he done? 'Behaviour' makes it sound as if it had been something awful."

"We needn't go into it, I think."

"But you are going into it, darling, all the time. Do you mean to keep it up against him for ever?"

"I'm not keeping anything up. What Ralph Bevan does is no concern of mine. Since I'm not to be inconvenienced by it—since Miss Madden has come to my rescue so charmingly—I shall not give it another thought."

He turned to Barbara as to a change of subject. "Had you any difficulty"—(his voice was measured and important)—"in finding your way here?"

"None at all."

"Ah, that one-thirty train is excellent. Excellent. But if you had not told the guard to stop at the Hill you would have been carried on to Cheltenham. Which would have been very awkward for you. Very awkward indeed."

"My dear Horatio, what did you suppose she would do?"

"My dear Fanny, there are many things she might have done. She might have got into the wrong coach at Paddington and been carried on to Worcester."

"And that," said Barbara, "would have been much worse than Cheltenham."

"The very thought of it," said Fanny, "makes me shudder. But thank God,
Barbara, you didn't do any of those things."

Mr. Waddington shifted the crossing of his legs as a big dog shifts his paws when you laugh at him; the more Fanny laughed the more dignified and solemn he became.

"You haven't told me yet, Horatio, what you did in London."

"I was just going to tell you when Miss Madden—so delightfully—came in."

At that Barbara thought it discreet to dismiss herself, but Fanny called her back. "What are you running away for? He didn't do anything in London he wouldn't like you to hear about."

"On the contrary, I particularly wish Miss Madden to hear about it. I am starting a branch of the National League of Liberty in Wyck. You may have heard of it?"

"Yes. I've heard of it. I've even seen the prospectus."

"Good. Well, Fanny, I lunched yesterday with Sir Maurice Gedge, and he's as keen as mustard. He agrees with me that the League will be no good, no good at all, until it's taken up strong in the provinces. He wants me to start at once. Just as soon as I can get my Committee."

"My dear, if you've got to have a Committee first you'll never start."

"It depends altogether on who I get. And it'll be my Committee. Sir Maurice was very emphatic about that. He agrees with me that if you want a thing done, and done well, you must do it yourself. There can only be one moving spirit. The Committee will have nothing to do but carry out my ideas."

"Then be sure you get a Committee that hasn't any of its own."

"That will not be difficult," said Mr. Waddington, "in Wyck…. The first thing is the prospectus. That's where you come in, Miss Madden."

"You mean the first thing is that Barbara draws up the prospectus."

"Under my supervision."

"The next thing," Fanny said, "is to conceal your prospectus from your Committee till it's in print. You come to your Committee with your prospectus. You don't offer it for discussion."

"Supposing," Barbara said, "they insist on discussing it?"

"They won't," said Fanny, "once it's printed, especially if it's paid for. You must get Pyecraft to send in his bill at once. And if they do start discussing you can put them off with the date and place of the meeting and the wording of the posters. That'll give them something to talk about. I suppose you'll be chairman."

"Well, I think, in the circumstances, they could hardly appoint anybody else."

"I don't know. Somebody might suggest Sir John Corbett."

Mr. Waddington's face sagged with dismay as Fanny presented this unpleasant possibility.

"I don't think Sir John would care about it. I shall suggest it to him myself; but I don't think—."

After all, Sir John Corbett was a lazy man.

"When you've roused Sir John, if you ever do rouse him, then you'll have to round up all the towns and villages for twenty miles. It's a pity you can't have Ralph; he would have rounded them for you in no time on his motor-bike."

"I am quite capable of rounding them all up myself, thank you."

"Well, dear," said Fanny placably, "it'll keep you busy for the next six months, and that'll be nice. You won't miss the war then so much, will you?"

"Miss the war?"

"Yes, you do miss it, darling. He was a special constable, Barbara; and he sat on tribunals; and he drove his motor-car like mad on government service. He had no end of a time. It's no use your saying you didn't enjoy it, Horatio, for you did."

"I was glad to be of service to my country as much as any soldier, but to say that I enjoyed the war—"

"If there hadn't been a war there wouldn't have been any service to be glad about."

"My dear Fanny, it's a perfectly horrible suggestion. Do you mean to say that I would have brought about that—that infamous tragedy, that I would have sent thousands and thousands of our lads to their deaths to get a job for myself? If I thought for one moment that you were serious—"

"You don't like me to be anything else, dear."

"I certainly don't like you to joke about such subjects."

"Oh, come," said Fanny, "we all enjoyed our war jobs except poor Ralph, who got gassed first thing, and then concussed with a shell-burst."

"Oh, did he?" said Barbara.

"He did. And don't you think, Horatio, considering the rotten time he's had, and that he lost a lucrative job through the war, and that you've done him out of his secretaryship, don't you think you might forgive him?"

"Of course," said Horatio, "I forgive him."

He had got up to go and had reached the door when Fanny called him back.
"And I can write and ask him to come and dine to-morrow night, can't I?
I want to be quite sure that he does dine."

"I have never said or implied," said Horatio, "that he was not to come and dine."

With that he left them.

"The beautiful thing about Horatio," said Fanny, "is that he never bears a grudge against people, no matter what he's done to them. I've no doubt that Ralph was excessively provoking and put him in the wrong, and yet, though he was in the wrong, and knows he was in it, he doesn't resent it. He doesn't resent it the least little bit."

2

Barbara wondered how and where she would be expected to spend her evenings now that Fanny's husband had come home. Being secretary to Mr. Waddington and companion to Fanny wouldn't mean being companion to both of them at once. So when Horatio appeared in the drawing-room after coffee, she asked if she might sit in the morning-room and write letters.

"Do you want to sit in the morning-room?" said Fanny.

"Well, I ought to write those letters."

"There's a fire in the library. You can write there. Can't she,
Horatio?"

Mr. Waddington looked up with the benign expression he had had when he came on Barbara alone in the drawing-room before dinner, a look so directed to her neck and shoulders that it told her how well her low-cut evening frock became her.

"She shall sit anywhere she likes. The library is hers whenever she wants to use it."

Barbara thought she would rather like the library. As she went she couldn't help seeing a look on Fanny's face that pleaded, that would have kept her with her. She thought: She doesn't want to be alone with him.

She judged it better to ignore that look.

She had been about an hour in the library; she had written her letters and chosen a book and curled herself up in the big leather chair and was reading when Mr. Waddington came in. He took no notice of her at first, but established himself at the writing-table with his back to her. He would, of course, want her to go. She uncurled herself and went quietly to the door.

Mr. Waddington looked up.

"You needn't go," he said.

Something in his face made her wonder whether she ought to stay. She remembered that she was Mrs. Waddington's companion.

"Mrs. Waddington may want me."

"Mrs. Waddington has gone to bed…. Don't go—unless you're tired. I'm getting my thoughts on paper and I may want you."

She remembered that she was Mr. Waddington's secretary.

She went back to her chair. It was only his face that had made her wonder. His great back, bent to his task, was like another person there; absorbed and unmoved, it chaperoned them. From time to time she heard brief scratches of his pen as he got a thought down. It was ten o'clock.

When the half-hour struck Mr. Waddington gave a thick "Ha!" of irritation and got up.

"It's no use," he said. "I'm not in form to-night. I suppose it's the journey."

He came to the fireplace and sat down heavily in the opposite chair.
Barbara was aware of his eyes, considering, appraising her.

"My wife tells me she has had a delightful time with you."

"I've had a delightful time with her."

"I'm glad. My wife is a very delightful woman; but, you know, you mustn't take everything she says too seriously."

"I won't. I'm not a very serious person myself."

"Don't say that. Don't say that."

"Very well. I think, if you don't want me, I'll say good night."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

He had risen as she rose and went to open the door for her. He escorted her through the smoke-room and stood there at the further door, holding out his hand, benignant and superbly solemn.

"Good night, then," he said.

She told herself that she was wrong, quite wrong about his poor old face. There was nothing in it, nothing but that grave and unadventurous benignity. His mood had been, she judged, purely paternal. Paternal and childlike, too; pathetic, if you came to think of it, in his clinging to her presence, her companionship. "It must have been my little evil mind," she thought.

3

As she went along the corridor she remembered she had left her knitting in the drawing-room. She turned to fetch it and found Fanny still there, wide awake with her feet on the fender, and reading "Tono-Bungay."

"Oh, Mrs. Waddington, I thought you'd gone to bed."

"So did I, dear. But I changed my mind when I found myself alone with
Wells. He's too heavenly for words."

Barbara saw it in a flash, then. She knew what she, the companion and secretary, was there for. She was there to keep him off her, so that Fanny might have more time to find herself alone in.

She saw it all.

"'Tono-Bungay,'" she said. "Was that what you sent me out with Mr.
Bevan for?"

"It was. How clever of you, Barbara."