The novelist reflected. “I didn’t notice,” she said. “I was busy observing things.”)
§6
Lady Beach-Mandarin’s car passed through the open gates and was swallowed up in the dusty stream of traffic down Putney Hill; the great butler withdrew, the little manservant vanished, Mrs. Sawbridge and her elder daughter had hovered and now receded from the back of the hall; Lady Harman remained standing thoughtfully in the large Bulwer-Lyttonesque doorway of her house. Her face expressed a vague expectation. She waited to be addressed from behind.
Then she became aware of the figure of her husband standing before her. He had come out of the laurels in front. His pale face was livid with anger, his hair dishevelled, there was garden mould and greenness upon his knees and upon his extended hands.
She was startled out of her quiet defensiveness. “Why, Isaac!” she cried. “Where have you been?”
It enraged him further to be asked so obviously unnecessary a question. He forgot his knightly chivalry.
“What the Devil do you mean,” he cried, “by chasing me all round the garden?”
“Chasing you? All round the garden?”
“You heard me breaking my shins on that infernal flower-pot you put for me, and out you shot with all your pack of old women and chased me round the garden. What do you mean by it?”
“I didn’t think you were in the garden.”