fell. She was a beautiful woman, very tall and queenly. Bertram
looked at her and paused; then he went on hurriedly, just to break
the awkward silence: "And this dance at Exeter, then--I suppose you
won't go to it?"

"Oh, I CAN'T, of course," Frida answered quickly. "And my two other
nieces--Robert's side, you know--who have nothing at all to do with
my brother Tom's wife, out there in India--they'll be SO
disappointed. I was going to take them down to it. Nasty thing!
How annoying of her! She might have chosen some other time to go
and die, I'm sure, than just when she knew I wanted to go to
Exeter!"

"Well, if it would be any convenience to you," Bertram put in with
a serious face, "I'm rather busy on Wednesday; but I could manage
to take up a portmanteau to town with my dress things in the
morning, meet the girls at Paddington, and run down by the evening
express in time to go with them to the hotel you meant to stop at.
They're those two pretty blondes I met here at tea last Sunday,
aren't they?"

Frida looked at him, half-incredulous. He was very nice, she knew,
and very quaint and fresh and unsophisticated and unconventional;
but could he be really quite so ignorant of the common usages of
civilised society as to suppose it possible he could run down alone
with two young girls to stop by themselves, without even a
chaperon, at an hotel at Exeter? She gazed at him curiously.
"Oh, Mr. Ingledew," she said, "now you're really TOO ridiculous!"

Bertram coloured up like a boy. If she had been in any doubt before