He obeyed with alacrity, as he always did in these caprices of his mother’s, and they sipped their coffee in suspended excitement, their eyes shining across the table like the eyes of two animals.

“Oh, it’ll be so amusing, going to the Horse Show,” she cried. “I wonder how many of them I shall recognize? Albert used to be ever so embarrassed when I made a fuss over him in public. And I did, you know, I often did; just to show I didn’t care a fig about Lorna’s silliness!”

Obscurely irritated by the flippancy of this allusion to his father’s misconduct, and definitely impatient at the enforced delay about the letter, Wolf suddenly burst out: “I’ve been to tea with Selena Gault, Mother. She wrote and invited me.” He did not say that he had been the first to take the initiative in this affair. He felt it to be revenge enough without that. But Mrs. Solent was a match for him.