Mrs. Craven folded the paper, stood up, and walked towards the door. "As usual, my dear, you have carried out your plan very perfectly."
"What plan?" asked Kate incautiously.
"Of treating Mr. Carter so badly," said Mrs. Craven, turning the handle, "that presently when he hits you back you will be able to bring yourself to hate him. But then you are always successful, Kitty dear, in everything you set your hand to—tryingly successful sometimes," Mrs. Craven added, and went out, and shut the door softly behind her.
Kate nodded at the door. "Aunt Jane," she said viciously, "there are moments when you are a perfect cat. But I will make him detest me for all that, and then I can truly and comfortably hate him. It's all very well their calling him a martyr. Why should everybody's feelings be consulted except mine?"
All the same, Kate bowed in a certain degree to public sentiment. One thinks also that she had not toughened herself sufficiently to meet Carter face to face. Anyway, she discovered that urgent affairs called her to London, and whirled off Aunt Jane to her flat that very night. She left Crewdson to fight the invader when he landed in Liverpool, and gave the old man definite instructions in writing that he was not to budge an inch from the firm's rights. "Show Mr. Carter this letter," she ordered, "if there is the least occasion for it."
But it seemed that West Africa pursued her. The telephone rang as soon as she got to the flat.
"That London? That Miss Head? This is Liverpool, Crewdson. London's just been calling you up. Will you ring Four-owe-seven-three Pad. What's that? No. Four-naught-seven-three Pad. Yes, that's it. Good-night, Miss."
Kate had more than half a mind to let 4,073 Pad alone. She was tired, and somehow in spite of all her successes she was a good deal dispirited. The British public had bought no less than four great rubber companies that she had offered them; the shares were all at a premium; everybody was pleased; and she had transferred her own profits safely into land and trustee securities. Since her first burst of success, money had simply rolled in on her, and already it had ceased to give her amusement. Success lay sour in her mouth. She asked Fortune for just one thing more. Because she was a woman she could not go and get it for herself. She told herself that it was only a convention that held her back—but she shuddered and chilled all over at the thought of breaking that convention.
She sat in a deep soft chair, twisting her long gloves into a hard string, and staring into the glow of the fire, and then with a "Faugh" at her own weakness, she threw the gloves onto the fender, and walked across to a telephone that stood on a side-table.
"Four-owe-seven-three Pad, please. No, Forty-seventy-three Paddington. Yes. Hullo? Hullo? Is that Four-nought-seven-three? This is Miss O'Neill. Liverpool rang up to say you wanted to speak to me. Who is that, please?"