before. The publicity of a hotel was impossible: it was impossible that she should get Charlie to come to Ashdown. But there was an empty house in London, which was hers, and no one except the caretaker and his wife would know she had been in town. What if she made a perfectly reasonable excuse to Mouse on the ground of shopping, and went to town on Thursday? Chops were possible even in dismantled houses; she could dine there, if chops were dinner, see Charlie there, and speak to him very strongly on the subject of discretion. It was so important; he must be brought to see that. It was impossible to explain things by letters, and letters in themselves were so dangerous. Also letters were so hard, so wooden. But with him beside her she could make him feel how she loathed and rebelled against this forced, this necessary surrender to what prudence dictated. It was only temporary.
The consistent falsity of her life came to-night to its logical conclusion. For years she had deceived others—those who most trusted and loved her—whenever she could suck but a small advantage therefrom, but she had not deceived herself. But now, in a matter so supreme as this, she achieved this crowning result, and when she told herself that it was in order to explain the policy of discretion to her lover that she was going to meet him, she believed it. She reined her imagination in; she would not let it spring forward to forecast the details of their meeting, its setting in the shrouded house, his arrival, the picnic dinner they would have together, the long talk which would burn up the hours of the evening like fire. All that she hid even from herself. The moment that her plan flashed into her mind she executed the things that were necessary for its realization, and wrote at once to the caretaker, saying that she would be coming up for Thursday night, would want the plainest of dinners for herself and a friend, and—that she would not bring her maid. It was better so; she should come up with the big luggage on Friday, and go straight to the Grosvenor Hotel. A couple of lines to Charlie completed the arrangements.
Only one thing remained for consideration, and that was what excuse exactly she should give Mouse. Shopping was a poor reason; everybody said shopping when she meant something else; it was not solid enough, not convincing enough. Then, the evening post having just been brought to her, she thought of something much better, and went to seek her hostess. But
