He was frowningly meditating on the mystic differences between a Stunt and an Idee, and was perhaps wondering how the former would demean itself if he took the risk of promoting it to the dignity of the latter, when the bell was heard to ring. A moment later Ruth opened the door.
"Lady Tasker," she said.
Lady Tasker entered a little agitatedly, with an early edition of the "Globe" crumpled in her hand.
II
BY THE WAY
Lady Tasker never missed the "Globe's" By the Way column, and there was a curious, mocking, unpleasant By-the-Way-ishness about the announcement she made as she entered. There is a special psychological effect, in the Harvard and not in the Hallowell and Smith's sense, when you come unexpectedly in print upon news that affects yourself. The multiplicity of newspapers notwithstanding, revelation still hits the ear less harshly than it does the eye; telling is still private and intimate, type a trumpeting to all the world at once. Dorothy looked at the pink page Lady Tasker had thrust into her hand as if it also, like the Litmus Layette, had turned blue before her eyes.
"Not Sir Benjamin who used to come and see father!" she said, dazed.
Lady Tasker had had time, on her way to the flat, to recover a little.