She wondered also whether those interminable Tapleys were going to talk like that till seven o'clock, and would Aunt P. go and ask them to stay to supper? Very likely! And she would have to be civil to them all the evening, she supposed.
Reflecting thus, her eye rested on the corner of the mahogany hall-bench, with a roll at each end; to prevent very short people falling over sideways, presumably. What she saw made her say, "What's this, Anne?"
"Which, Ma'am?" said Anne. "Perhaps the Missis knows."
This thing was inside brown paper, and rectangular. The corners were hard, but the middle clicketted. Probably a passe-partout. At least, it could be nothing else. So if it wasn't a passe-partout, it was non-suited, quoad existence. Mrs. Aiken opened the drawing-room door, meeting a gust of the Tapleys, both speaking at once. It didn't matter. Aunt Priscilla heard all the plainer for a noise. There certainly was one.
Her niece said, through it, "Have you ordered a photograph, Aunty?" No, no photograph had been ordered. "Then I shall have to look at it, to see what it is," said Mrs. Aiken. The Tapleys sanctioned and encouraged this course, with loud shouts. And it really is a capital step to take when you want to find out what a thing is, to look at it and see.
It was a photograph, and was recognised at once by Mrs. Aiken as a copy from the Surley Stakes picture. It was a print of the photograph that Madeline had sent a copy of to Mr. Aiken at the Studio, a long time before. You remember how it stood on the table while he talked with Mr. Hughes? "I see," said Euphemia; "Miss Upwell must have left it behind. We must get it back to her." And she was proceeding to wrap it up again; not, however, without seeing enough of it to be sure of its identity.
But she was reckoning without her guests, who pounced simultaneously on the back of the photograph, crying out, "Stop!—it's written on. Read behind." Whereupon it was read behind that this photograph was for Mrs. Reginald Aiken, Athabasca Villa, Coombe. "I suppose she brought it for me," said that lady, rather sulkily.
"Whatever she came for I can't make out," said the niece to the Aunt after supper, and indeed after the departure of the Tapleys. For Mrs. Aiken's worst anticipations had been fulfilled, and they had been invited to stay to supper and had done so remorselessly.
The Aunt could throw no light on this sudden appearance of Miss Upwell. "She has great charm of manner," she said. "She reminds me a little of the late Lady Betty Dusters. It is in the turn of the chin." But Miss Bax's chin, cited in action to confirm this turn, was unconvincing.
Her niece ignored the late Lady Betty. "I think the girl was going lengths in coming at all," she said. "After all, what did it amount to? Just that she and this young soldier of hers came to the Studio to see a picture. And supposing it did happen on the day when Reginald behaved so detestably with that horrible girl! Doesn't that make it all the other way round?" She wished to express that if Miss Upwell had come to know about her quarrel with her husband, she should have kept her distance the more on that account. But she was not equal to the effort, and perhaps acknowledged it when she said, "You know what I mean, so it's no use drum-drum-drumming it all through, like a cart-horse or a barrel-organ. Anyhow, Miss Upsley Pupsley would have shown better taste to keep away, to my thinking!"