Barbara saw it in a flash, then. She knew what she, the companion and
secretary, was there for. She was there to keep him off her, so that
Fanny might have more time to find herself alone in.

She saw it all.

"'Tono-Bungay,'" she said. "Was _that_ what you sent me out with Mr.
Bevan for?"

"It was. How clever of you, Barbara."




IV


1

Mr. Waddington closed the door on Miss Madden slowly and gently so that
the action should not strike her as dismissive. He then turned on the
lights by the chimneypiece and stood there, looking at himself in the
glass. He wanted to know exactly how his face had presented itself to
Miss Madden. It would not be altogether as it appeared to himself; for
the glass, unlike the young girl's clear eyes, was an exaggerating and
distorting medium; he had noticed that his wife's face in the smoke-room
glass looked a good ten years older than the face he knew; he
calculated, therefore, that this faint greenish tint, this slightly
lop-sided elderly grimace were not truthful renderings of his complexion
and his smile. And as (in spite of these defects, which you could put