"Forty-three. Of course in confidence," I added hastily.
"There is no confidence in Eternity."
"Then you, too, are a sceptic?" I ventured. She merely stared at me fixedly, then proceeded to turn over the leaves of the tome in front of her. Soon she found what appeared to be the correct page. After fully a minute's deliberate contemplation of the entry, she looked up suddenly and regarded me with a solemn gravity that struck me as grotesque.
"Not a very bad case, let's hope," I put in cheerfully. "There have been——"
"Silence!"
I started as if shot, and looking round discovered beside me the impassive visage of the ill-favoured Vestal of the ante-room.
"I wish you wouldn't bawl in my ear like that," I snapped. "It's most unpleasant."
"Anthony Charles Windover," it was Mrs. Grundy who spoke in a voice that was deep-throated and disapproving, "age forty-three." She looked up again with her cold and malevolent stare; "yours is a grave record; we will deal with it in detail."
"Surely, Madam," I protested, "it is not necessary to go over everything. I am so hopeless at accounts."
"First there was the case of Cecily Somers," she proceeded unmoved.