“But how about Mr. Hosmer Angel? Did he make no attempt to see you?”

“Well, father was going off to France again in a week, and Hosmer wrote and said that it would be safer and better not to see each other until he had gone. We could write in the meantime, and he used to write every day. I took the letters in in the morning, so there was no need for father to know.”

“Were you engaged to the gentleman at this time?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Holmes. We were engaged after the first walk that we took. Hosmer — Mr. Angel — was a cashier in an office in Leadenhall Street — and —”

“What office?”

“That’s the worst of it, Mr. Holmes, I don’t know.”

“Where did he live, then?”

“He slept on the premises.”

“And you don’t know his address?”

“No — except that it was Leadenhall Street.”

“Where did you address your letters, then?”

“To the Leadenhall Street Post-Office, to be left till called for. He said that if they were sent to the office he would be chaffed by all the other clerks about having letters from a lady, so I offered to typewrite them, like he did his, but he wouldn’t have that, for he said that when I wrote wrote them they seemed to come from me, but when they were typewritten he always felt that the machine had come between us. That will just show you how fond he was of me, Mr. Holmes, and the little things that he would think of.”

“It was most suggestive,” said Holmes. “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. Can you remember any other little things about Mr. Hosmer Angel?”

“He was a very shy man, Mr. Holmes. He would rather walk with me in the evening than in the daylight, for he said that he hated to be conspicuous. Very retiring and gentlemanly he was. Even his voice was gentle. He’d had the quinsy and swollen glands when he was young, he told me, and it had left him with a weak throat, and a hesitating, whispering fashion of speech. He was always well dressed, very neat and plain, but his eyes were weak, just as mine are, and he wore tinted glasses against the glare.”

“Well, and what happened when Mr. Windibank, your stepfather, returned to France?”

“Mr. Hosmer Angel came to the house again and proposed that we should marry before father came back. He was in dreadful earnest and made me swear, with my hands on the Testament, that whatever happened I would always be true to him. Mother said he was quite right to make me swear, and that it was a sign of his passion. Mother was all in his favour from the first and was even fonder of him than I was. Then, when they talked of marrying within the week, I began to ask about father; but they both said never to mind about father, but just to tell him afterwards, and mother said she would make it all right with him. I didn’t quite like that, Mr. Holmes. It seemed funny that I should ask his leave, as he was only a few years older than me; but I didn’t want to do anything on the sly, so I wrote to father at Bordeaux, where the company has its French offices, but the letter came back to me on the very morning of the wedding.”

“I’ll be careful, then.”

“Yes, and you can’t be too careful.”

“You make me frightened.”

“I would like to make you very frightened indeed, so that you went back humbly to your wife and family.”

“It would HAVE to be a big fright then, I assure you.”

“Ah, you are really heartless. It makes me angry.”

She turned angrily aside.

“Well, well! Well, well! Life! Life! Young men are a new thing to me!” said Sir William, shaking his head. “Well, well! What do you say to whiskey and soda, Colonel?”

“Why, delighted, Sir William,” said the Colonel, bouncing up.

“A night–cap, and then we retire,” said Lady Franks.

Aaron sat thinking. He knew Sir William liked him: and that Lady Franks didn’t. One day he might have to seek help from Sir William. So he had better placate milady. Wrinkling the fine, half mischievous smile on his face, and trading on his charm, he turned to his hostess.

“You wouldn’t mind, Lady Franks, if I said nasty things about my wife and found a lot of fault with her. What makes you angry is that I know it is not a bit more her fault than mine, that we come apart. It can’t be helped.”

“Oh, yes, indeed. I disapprove of your way of looking at things altogether. It seems to me altogether cold and unmanly and inhuman. Thank goodness my experience of a man has been different.”

“We can’t all be alike, can we? And if I don’t choose to let you see me crying, that doesn’t prove I’ve never had a bad half hour, does it? I’ve had many—ay, and a many.”

“Then why are you so WRONG, so wrong in your behaviour?”

“I suppose I’ve got to have my bout out: and when it’s out, I can alter.”

“Then I hope you’ve almost had your bout out,” she said.

“So do I,” said he, with a half–repentant, half–depressed look on his attractive face. The corners of his mouth grimaced slightly under his moustache.

“The best thing you can do is to go straight back to England, and to her.”

“Perhaps I’d better ask her if she wants me, first,” he said drily.

“Yes, you might do that, too.” And Lady Franks felt she was quite getting on with her work of reform, and the restoring of woman to her natural throne. Best not go too fast, either.

“Say when,” shouted the Colonel, who was manipulating the syphon.

“When,” said Aaron.

The men stood up to their drinks.

“Will you be leaving in the morning, Mr. Sisson?” asked Lady Franks.

“May I stay till Monday morning?” said Aaron. They were at Saturday evening.

“Certainly. And you will take breakfast in your room: we all do. At what time? Half past eight?”

“Thank you very much.”

“Then at half past eight the man will bring it in. Goodnight.”