He went to the door, and Mrs. Herbert promptly answered the ring.

“She’s still at breakfast,” whispered the woman confidentially, when she’d closed the door behind him. “She had a visitor last night,” she added. Wolf hung up his coat and hat on one peg in the little hall, and his stick upon another peg. Each of these pegs looked like the head of Mukalog, as he used them. He received a vague impression that the landlady had jerked an insulting and libidinous thumb towards his mother’s room before she went off down the passage!

He knocked, heard his mother’s indolent reply, and entered.

She welcomed him radiantly. She was fully dressed and looked surprisingly young.

“Sit down, my dear one,” she said, “and smoke while I finish my coffee.”