"I said—probably. You can lay another place if she comes." A vision crossed her mind of making so small a point as that, a moment of embarrassment for her unwelcome guest.
Then a sound reached her ears. Her eyes were arrested, fixed unseeingly to a point before her as she listened.
"Is that a motor, Taylor?"
Taylor looked out of the window. "It's a taxi-cab, madam."
"Can you see who's inside?"
"I suppose it's Mr. Traill, madam. Yes—it is."
"Any one with him?"
"Yes, madam—a lady."
CHAPTER II
Circumstances will almost make a character in a day; in three years, a character can be moulded, bent, twisted or straightened, in the furnace of events; just as the potter, idling with the passive clay, will shape it, heedlessly almost, as the fancy nerves his fingers. But before he is aware, the time slips by, the clay gets set and there, in front of his eyes, is the figure as his fancy made it—brittle, easily broken into dust, but impossible of being moulded afresh until it shall again go back into the water of oblivion and become the shapeless mass that once it was.