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The lady’s foot began to tap upon the carpet. Mr. Dale stopped and leaned critically forward.

“Well! Why don’t you go on?” she asked impatiently.

“It’s pretty,” he reflected aloud.

The foot disappeared demurely into the seclusion of petticoats. “You exasperate me,” she remarked. But her face hardly guaranteed her words. “We were speaking of ties.”

“Ah, the tie wasn’t pretty. It was of satin, bright yellow with blue spots. And an idea struck me; yes, an idea! Sir John’s election colours are yellow, his opponent’s blue. So I thought the tie would make a tactful present, symbolical (do you see?) of the state of the parties in the constituency.”

He paused a second time.

“Well?”

“I went in and bought it.”

“Well?”

“Julian Fairholm sold it to me.”

Lady Tamworth stared at the speaker in pure perplexity. Then all at once she understood and the blood eddied into her cheeks. “I don’t believe it!” she exclaimed.

“His face would be difficult to mistake,” Mr. Dale objected. “Besides I had time to assure myself, for I had to wait my turn. When I entered the shop, he was serving a woman with baby-linen. Oh yes! Julian Fairholm sold me the tie.”

Lady Tamworth kept her eyes upon the ground. Then she looked up. She struck the arm of her chair with her closed fist and cried in a quick petulance, “How dare he?”

“Exactly what I thought,” answered her companion smoothly. “The colours were crude by themselves, the combination was detestable. And he an artist too!” Mr. Dale laughed pleasantly.

“Did he speak to you?”

“He asked me whether I would take a packet of pins instead of a farthing.”

“Ah, don’t,” she entreated, and rose from her chair. It might have been her own degradation of which Mr. Dale was speaking.

“By the way,” he added, “I was so taken aback that I forgot to present the tie. Would you?”

“No! No!” she said decisively and turned away. But a sudden notion checked her. “On second thoughts I will; but I can’t promise to make him wear it.”

The smile which sped the words flickered strangely upon quivering lips and her eyes shone with anger. However the tie changed hands, and Lady Tamworth tripped down stairs and stepped into her brougham. The packet lay upon her lap and she unfolded it. A round ticket was enclosed, and the bill. On the ticket was printed, A Present from Zedediah Moss. With a convulsion of disgust she swept the parcel on to the floor. “How dare he?” she cried again, and her thoughts flew back to the brief period of their engagement. She had been just Kitty Arlton in those days, the daughter of a poor sea-captain but dowered with the compensating grace of personal attractions. Providence had indisputably designed her for the establishment of the family fortunes; such at all events was the family creed, and the girl herself felt no inclination to doubt a faith which was backed by the evidence of her looking-glass. Julian Fairholm at that time shared a studio with her brother, and the acquaintance thus begun ripened into an attachment and ended in a betrothal. For Julian, in the common prediction, possessed that vague blessing, a future. It is true the common prediction was always protected by a saving clause: “If he could struggle free from his mysticism.” But none the less his pictures were beginning to sell, and the family displayed a moderate content. The discomposing appearance of Sir John Tamworth, however, gave a different complexion to the matter. Sir John was rich, and had besides the confident pertinacity of success. In a word, Kitty Arlton married Sir John.

Lady Tamworth’s recollections of the episode were characteristically vague; they came back to her in pieces like disconnected sections of a wooden puzzle. She remembered that she had written an exquisitely pathetic letter to Fairholm “when the end came,” as she expressed it; and she recalled queer scraps of the artist’s talk about the danger of forming ties. “New ties,” he would say, “mean new duties, and they hamper and clog the will.” Ah yes, the will; he was always holding forth about that and here was the lecture finally exemplified! He was selling baby-linen in the Mile-End road. She had borne her disappointment, she reflected, without any talk about will. The thought of her self-sacrifice even now brought the tears to her eyes; she saw herself wearing her orange-blossoms in the spirit of an Iphigeneia.