Margaret spent a successful day in London. The dentist did not keep her waiting more than a quarter of an hour, and his excavations were not too painful. In the afternoon she visited the flat Peter and she owned in Knightsbridge, and unearthed his service revolver from a trunk in the box-room. Next she drove to Celia's house in Kensington, and after prolonged search located Charles' revolver. There remained only Mrs. Bosanquet's planchette, and this the maid she had left in charge of her flat was easily able to find. By the time all these commissions had been executed Margaret was feeling ready for tea, and after that she had some shopping of her own to do. This occupied her till six o'clock, and then, somewhat weary, but with the consciousness of having left nothing undone, she drove to her club, and sat down to await the arrival of her friend, Peggy Mason.
She did not expect Mrs. Mason before seven o'clock, so that she had almost an hour to while away. Under the disapproving glare of one of the more elderly members of the club she ordered a cocktail, and curled herself up in a large arm-chair with an illustrated journal, a cigarette, and her Bronx.
The journal was, as usual, full of pictures of sunburnt people snapped on the Lido, but the odd thing about it was that though the legend under the snapshots might read: "Lord So-and-so and Miss Something-else in a happy mood," Lord So-and-so's face became unaccountably the face of Michael Strange. Information concerning the doings of all these leisured people changed to such irrelevant scraps as: "But what was he doing in the garden at that hour?" and: "Could he really have been in our cellars that day we tried to locate the groan and saw him by the drawing-room windows?"
Margaret told herself severely that she was thinking a great deal too much about Michael Strange, and applied herself to the Tatler with a firm resolve to think about him no more.
But excellent though the resolve might be it was impossible to keep to it. Margaret gave up all pretence of doing so after five minutes, and permitted her refractory mind to do as it pleased.
Except for a brief infatuation for her drawing-master which attacked her at the age of sixteen she had never been in love. Her mother had died when she was still at school, her father three years later, and since that time she and Peter had kept house together. They were a very devoted couple, and so far Margaret had not felt in the least tempted to leave him for any one of the several suitors who had wished her to marry them. In the nicest possible way she had refused all offers, and it said much for her that these rejections never interfered with her friendship with the young man in question, nor, which was more important, with his friendship with her brother. One or two continued to cherish hopes, but when the most importunate of her suitors consoled himself eventually elsewhere, Margaret, no dog-in-the manger, was unaffectedly glad and promptly made a friend of his bride, the very lady who was to dine with her this evening.
Until she met Michael Strange she was almost sure that she was not the sort of girl who fell in love. She wasn't at all cast down by this conviction; she didn't want to fall in love. People in love became sloppy, she thought, and they were a nuisance to all their friends, which was a pity. A girl had once told her raptly that she had known as soon as she had set eyes on the young man of her affections, that she would either marry him or no one. Margaret had considered this not only absurd, but sickly.
But during the past week she had somewhat modified her judgment. Not that she would ever be such a ninny as to fall flat in front of a man in that nauseating fashion, she told herself. Still, without going to such extremes she was bound to acknowledge that Mr. Michael Strange had done something very queer indeed to her.
As to falling in love, that was rot, of course. One didn't fall in love with complete strangers, and certainly not with strangers who behaved as oddly as he was behaving. But the fact remained that from that very first meeting, when he had changed one of the wheels of the car for her she had, in her own words, "taken to him," as she could not remember ever having "taken to' anyone before. There was something about his smile, which lost nothing by being rather rarely seen, that attracted her. He was good-looking too, but she didn't think that had much to do with it, for she knew men far better-looking, and she hadn't "taken to' them in the least. No, it wasn't anything she could explain, but she just liked him very much.
She was in the habit of being as honest with herself as she could, and at this point she paused. There was rather more to it than just liking him very much. She had a suspicion that the same romantically-minded girl who had rhapsodised over her own emotions, would have described the effect of Mr. Michael Strange on her friend as "thrilling." Margaret was not in the habit of being thrilled by young men, however personable, and she felt slightly affronted to think that such an idea had even crossed her mind. Then a really shocking thought reared up its head: she wouldn't mind if Mr. Michael Strange tried to kiss her. Quite disgusted with herself, she realised that so far from minding she would rather like it. For one who had the greatest objection to stray embraces, this was unheard of. Margaret put the thought hurriedly aside: in every other way she prided herself on her modernity, but when it came to letting men maul you about- no!