"It is on gravel," put in Lord Fallowfeild anxiously. "Saw it myself—distinctly remember seeing gravel when the heather had been pared before digging the foundations—bright yellow gravel."
"Yes, and with a ten-foot bed of blue clay underneath. Most dangerous soil going,"—this from Dr. Knott, grimly.
"Is it, though?" Lord Fallowfeild inquired, with an amiable effort to welcome unpalatable, geological information.
"Not a doubt of it. The surface water and generally the sewage—for we are very far yet from having discovered a drain-pipe which is impeccable in respect of leakage—soak through the porous cap down to the clay and lie there—to rise again not at the Last Day by any means, but on the evening of the very first one that's been hot enough to cause evaporation."
"Do they, though?" said Lord Fallowfeild. He was greatly impressed.—"Capable fellow, Knott, wonderful thing science," he commented inwardly and with praiseworthy humility.
But Mr. Cathcart returned to the charge.
"The hospital was disastrously the loser, in any case," he remarked. "As a matter of course, the conditions having been disregarded, Lady Calmady withdrew her promise of a second donation."
"Oh! ah! Lady Calmady, really!" the simple-minded nobleman exclaimed. "Very interesting piece of news and very generous intention, no doubt, on the part of Lady Calmady. But give you my word Cathcart that until this moment I had no notion that the anonymous donor of whom we heard so much from one or two members of the committee—heard too much, I thought, for I dislike mysteries—foolish, unprofitable things mysteries—always turn out to be nothing at all in the finish—oh! ah! yes—well, that the anonymous donor was Lady Calmady!"
And thereupon he shifted his position with as much assumption of hauteur as his inherent amiability permitted. He turned his chair sideways, presenting an excellently flat, if somewhat broad, scarlet-clad back to his persecutor upon the hearth-rug.—"Sorry to set a man down in his own house," he said to himself, "but Cathcart's a little wanting in taste sometimes. He presses a subject home too closely. And, if I was bamboozled by Image, it really isn't Cathcart's place to remind me of it."
He turned a worried and puckered countenance upon his hostess, upon Dr. Knott, upon the drawing-room door. In the hall beyond one or two guests still lingered. A lady had just joined them, notably straight and tall, and lazily graceful of movement. Lord Fallowfeild knew her, but could not remember her name.