“Sir Isaac saw her, my lady. They ’ad tea in the study.”
“I wish I had been at home to see her,” said Lady Harman, after a brief interval of reflection.
She took her two letters and turned to the staircase. They were still in her hand when presently she came into her husband’s study. “I don’t want a light,” he said, as she put out her hand to the electric switch. His voice had a note of discontent, but he was sitting in the armchair against the window so that she could not see his features.
“How are you feeling this afternoon?” she asked.
“I’m feeling all right,” he answered testily. He seemed to dislike inquiries after his health almost as much as he disliked neglect.
She came and stood by him and looked out from the dusk of the room into the garden darkening under a red-barred sky. “There is fresh trouble between Mrs. Pembrose and the girls,” she said.
“She’s been telling me about it.”
“She’s been here?”
“Pretty nearly an hour,” said Sir Isaac.
Lady Harman tried to imagine that hour’s interview on the spur of the moment and failed. She came to her immediate business. “I think,” she said, “that she has been—high-handed....”