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'Of course I know what it means. It's no discovery!' That was exactly the right note. Tietjens--and Mrs Duchemin too--could hear Mr Duchemin, invisible behind his rampart of blue spikes and silver, give the answering snuffle of a reproved schoolboy. A hard-faced, small man, in grey tweed that buttoned, collar-like, tight round his throat, standing behind the invisible chair, gazed straight forward into infinity.

Tietjens said to himself:

'By God! Parry! the Bermondsey light middle-weight! He's there to carry Duchemin off if he becomes violent!'

During the quick look that Tietjens took round the table, Mrs Duchemin gave, sinking lower in her chair, a short gasp of utter relief. Whatever Macmaster was going to think of her, he thought now. He knew the worst! It was settled, for good or ill. In a minute she would look round at him.

Tietjens said:

'It's all right, Macmaster will be splendid. We had a friend up at Cambridge with your husband's tendencies, and Macmaster could get him through any social occasion...Besides, we're all gentlefolk here!'

He had seen the Rev. Mr Horsley and Mrs Wannop both interested in their plates. Of Miss Wannop he was not so certain. He had caught, bent obviously on himself, from large, blue eyes, a glance that was evidently appealing. He said to himself: 'She must be in the secret. She's appealing to me not to show emotion and upset the applecart I It is a shame that she should be here: a girl!' and into his answering glance he threw the message: 'It's all right as far as this end of the table is concerned.'

But Mrs Duchemin had felt come into herself a little stiffening of morale. Macmaster by now knew the worst; Duchemin was quoting snufffingly to him the hot licentiousness of the Trimalchio of Petronius; snuffling into Macmaster's ear. She caught the phrase: Froturianas, puer callide...Duchemin, holding her wrist with the painful force of the maniac, had translated it to her over and over again...No doubt, that too, this hateful man beside her would have guessed!

She said: 'Of course we should be all gentlefolk here. One naturally arranges that...'

Tietjens began to say:

'Ah! But it isn't easy to arrange nowadays. All sorts of bounders get into all sorts of holies of holies!'

Mrs Duchemin turned her back on him right in the middle of his sentence. She devoured Macmaster's face with her eyes, in an infinite sense of calm.

Macmaster four minutes before had been the only one to see the entrance, from a small panelled door that had behind it another of green baize, of the Rev. Mr Duchemin, and following him a man whom Macmaster, too, recognized at once as Parry, the ex-prize-fighter. It flashed through his mind at once that this was an extraordinary conjunction. It flashed through his mind, too, that it was extraordinary that anyone so ecstatically handsome as Mrs Duchemin's husband should not have earned high preferment in a Church always hungry for male beauty. Mr Duchemin was extremely tall, with a slight stoop of the proper clerical type. His face was of alabaster; his grey hair, parted in the middle, fell brilliantly on his high brows; his glance was quick, penetrating, austere; his nose very hooked and chiselled. He was the exact man to adorn a lofty and gorgeous fane, as Mrs Duchemin was the exact woman to consecrate an episcopal drawing-room. With his great wealth, scholarship and tradition...'Why then,' went through Macmaster's mind in a swift pin-prick of suspicion, 'isn't he at least a dean?'

Mr Duchemin had walked swiftly to his chair which Parry, as swiftly walking behind him, drew out. His master slipped into it with a graceful, sideways motion. He shook his head at grey Miss Fox who had moved a hand towards an ivory urn-tap. There was a glass of water beside his plate, and round it his long, very white fingers closed. He stole a quick glance at Macmaster, and then looked at him steadily with laughingly glittering eyes. He said: 'Good morning, doctor,' and then, drowning Macmaster's quiet