At some time, perhaps an hour after I had settled down, I went to sleep. I cannot fix, or make any attempt at fixing, the exact moment at which the conscious effort of my imagination passed into the unconscious romance building of dream. But I know that the Archdeacon totally disappeared, while Lalage, a pleasantly stimulating personality, haunted me. I may have slept for an hour, perhaps for an hour and a half. Looking back on the afternoon, and arranging its chronology to fit between two fixed points of time, I am certain that I did not sleep for more than an hour and a half. It was a few minutes after two o’clock when I sat down to luncheon. I am sure of this, because my mother’s eyes sought the clock on the chimney piece when we entered the dining-room together and mine followed them. It was half-past five when I saw her again in the drawing-room. I am equally sure of this because she kissed me three times rather effusively and I was obliged to look at my watch to hide my embarrassment. Between two o’clock and half-past five I lunched, smoked, read, slept, and played a part in certain other events. This makes it tolerably certain that I did not sleep for more than an hour and a half.
I was wakened by a most violent opening of the greenhouse door and a tempestuous rustling of the fronds of the tree fern which I had moved. Then Lalage burst upon me. My first impulse was to struggle out of my chair and offer it to her. She made a motion of excited refusal and I sank back again. I noticed, while she stood before me, that her face was unusually flushed. It seemed to me that she was passing through what McMeekin used to describe as a nerve storm. I leaped to the conclusion that the Archdeacon had not taken kindly to the idea of a marriage with Miss Battersby.
“How did it go off?” I asked.
“Where’s your mother?” said Lalage.
“She’s not here. You ought to know better than to expect her to be here. Is she the sort of person who’d waste an afternoon in a disused greenhouse? She’s probably doing something useful. Did you ask if she was covering pots of marmalade?”
“I’ve searched everywhere.”
“Never mind. She’s certain to turn up for tea.”
Lalage stamped her foot.
“I want her at once,” she said. “I want to talk to her.”
“I’m a very poor substitute for my mother, of course; but if you can’t find her——”