' Oh dear no. They are staying about together in Scotland now. But something has happened. What has happened, I suppose she knows. Bertie doesn't.'
' Since when was this?' asked Charlie.
' About six weeks ago, towards the middle of July—and quite suddenly. Bertie says she had been lunching with her father one day, to talk over the railway matters, and when she came back she was quite a different person. Quite polite, you understand, quite courteous and considerate, but as far away as the Antipodes.'
Sybil got out of her chair with a sudden quick movement.
' Mrs. Emsworth,' she said.
' But there was nothing to know,' said Ginger. ' There were no revelations possible, because there was nothing to reveal.'
' Mrs. Emsworth,' said Sybil again emphaticatly. ' I remember seeing her about that time, and she told me that Amelie had been to call on her. She said she had been rather prim, rather priggish, and in that connection made remarks about the refining influence of married life. I asked what she meant, and she said that Bertie had cut her, dropped her. She was rather incisive over it, and tried to laugh about it. But she didn't like it, all the same. I can recommend her remarks about Puritans to the attention of—of Puritans.'
Ginger sat up.
' Amelie's an awfully good sort,' he said—' and so is Bertie. But to dine with them as I did just before they went North was like dining with a piece of ice at one end of the table, and a lump of snow at the other. Now, what has happened? I reconstruct this: that Mrs. Emsworth, being annoyed with Bertie, told Amelie what friends they had been. There's a working hypothesis, anyhow.'
' But platonically,' said Charlie.
' Platonism was—was Aristotelian in its inten-
