'Barlow didn't ask that.' She spoke quietly.
'Barlow!' he echoed, with a truly horrified look. 'I should think not!'
'Barlow!' Lord John caught up the name on his way out with Jean. 'You two still talking Barlow? How flattered the old beggar'd be! Did you hear'—he turned back and linked his arm in Greatorex's—'did you hear what Mrs. Heriot said about him? "So kind, so munificent—so vulgar, poor soul, we couldn't know him in London—but we shall meet him in heaven!"'
The two men went out chuckling.
Jean stood hesitating a moment, glancing through the window at the laughing men, and back at the group of women, Mrs. Heriot seated magisterially at the head of the writing-table, looking with inimical eyes at Miss Levering, who stood in the middle of the hall with head bent over the plan.
'Sit here, my dear,' Lady John called to her. Then with a glance at her niece, 'You needn't stay, Jean; this won't interest you.'
Miss Levering glanced over her shoulder as she moved to the chair opposite Lady John, and in the tone of one agreeing with the dictum just uttered, 'It's only an effort to meet the greatest evil in the world,' she said, and sat down with her back to the girl.
'What do you call the greatest evil in the world?' Jean asked.
A quick look passed between Mrs. Heriot and Lady John.
Miss Levering answered without emphasis, 'The helplessness of women.'