him! And now, to defend an action utterly indefensible, she was
employing a tone that might be compared to some fiendish instrumental
device of a dentist.

But James Ollerenshaw did not wish his teeth stopped, nor yet extracted.
He had excellent teeth. And, in common with all men who have never taken
thirty consecutive repasts alone with the same woman, he knew how to
treat women, how to handle them--the trout!

He stood up. He raised all his body. Helen raised only her eyebrows.

"Helen Rathbone!" Such was the exordium. As an exordium, it was
faultless. But it was destined to remain a fragment. It goes down to
history as a perfect fragment, like the beginning of a pagan temple that
the death of gods has rendered superfluous.

For a dog-cart stopped in front of the house at that precise second,
deposited a lady of commanding mien, and dashed off again. The lady
opened James's gate and knocked at James's front door. She could not be
a relative of a tenant. James was closely acquainted with all his
tenants, and he had none of that calibre. Moreover, Helen had caused a
small board to be affixed to the gate: "Tenants will please go round to
the back."

"Bless us!" he murmured, angrily. And, by force of habit, he went and
opened the door. Then he recognised the lady. It was Sarah Swetnam,
eldest child of the large and tumultuously intellectual Swetnam family
that lived in a largish house in a largish way higher up the road, and
as to whose financial stability rumour always had something interesting
to say.