The triumphant self-absorption of Lady Catherine, a mood that comprehended not merely self-absorption but the absorption therewith of this immense and exciting and unprecedented Mr. Sempack, gave place abruptly to an entirely different state of mind, to astonishment and even a certain consternation. Central to this new phase of consciousness, was the vividly sunlit figure of little Mrs. Rylands, agape. Agape she was, dismayed, as though she had that instant been suddenly and horribly stung. A sound between the “Oo-er” of an infantile astonishment and a cry of acute pain had proclaimed her.

She stood in the blaze of the Caatinga, flushed and distressed, altogether at a loss in the presence of her surprising guests. She was bareheaded and she carried no sunshade. Her loose-robed figure had the effect of a small child astray.

A swift automatic disentanglement of Lady Catherine and Mr. Sempack had occurred. By rapid gradations all three recovered their social consciousness. In a moment they were grouped like actors who have momentarily forgotten their cues, but are about to pick them up again. Mr. Sempack stood up belatedly.

It was Lady Catherine who was first restored to speech.

“I have been telling Mr. Sempack that he ought to come into public life,” she said. “He is too great a man to remain aloof writing books.”

Mrs. Rylands’ expression was enigmatical. She seemed to be listening and trying to remember the meaning of the sounds she heard. It dawned upon Lady Catherine that her eyes were red with recent weeping. What had happened? Was this some mood of her condition?

Then Mrs. Rylands took control of herself. In another moment she was the hostess of Casa Terragena again, with the edge of her speech restored. “You’ve been persuading him very delightfully, I’m sure, dearest,” she smiled, the smile of a charming hostess — if a little wet about the eyes. “Is he going to?”

“No,” said Mr. Sempack, speaking down with large tranquil decision. But his mind was upon Mrs. Rylands.

A different line of treatment had occurred to Lady Catherine. She snatched at it hastily. She abandoned the topic of Mr. Sempack and his career. “But, my dear!” she cried. “What are you doing in this blazing sun? You ought to be tucked away in a hammock in the shade!”

Mrs. Rylands evidently thought this sudden turn of topic disconcerting. She stared at this new remark as if she disliked it extremely and did not know what to do with it.

Then she broke down. “Everybody seems to think I ought to be tucked away somewhere,” she said, and fairly sobbed. “I’ve done the unexpected. I’ve put everybody out.”

She stood weeping like a child. Consternation fell upon Lady Catherine. Mutely she consulted Mr. Sempack and a slight but masterly movement indicated that he would be better left alone with Mrs. Rylands. His wish marched with Lady Catherine’s own impulse to fly.

“I’ve got letters, lots of letters,” she said. “I’m forgetting them. I was talking. To post in Monte Carlo this afternoon. If we go, that is.”

Mrs. Rylands seemed to approve of this suggestion of a retreat and Lady Catherine became a receding umbrella that halted in the rocky archway for a vague undecided retrospect and then disappeared.

Mrs. Rylands remained standing, looking at the archway. She had an air of standing there because she had nowhere else in the whole world to go, and looking at the archway because there was nothing else on earth to look at. She might have been left on a platform by a train, the only possible train, she had intended to take.

“I thought I would talk to you,” she said, not looking at Mr. Sempack but still contemplating the vanished back of Lady Catherine.

“It is too hot for us to be here,” said Mr. Sempack, taking hold of the situation. “Quite close round the corner beyond the stone-pines, there is shade and running water and a seat.”

“It was absurd, but I thought I would talk to you.” Her intonation implied that this was no longer a possibility.

Mr. Sempack made no immediate reply.

The first thing to do he perceived was to get Mrs. Rylands out of the blaze of the sun. Then more was required of him. Evidently she had been assailed by some sudden, violent, and nearly unbearable trouble. Something had struck her, some passionate shocking blow, that had detached her spinning giddily from everything about her. And she had thought of him as large, intelligent, immobile, neutral — above all and in every sense neutral, as indeed a convenient bulk, a sympathetic disinterested bulk, to which one might cling in a torrent of dismay, and which might even have understanding to hold one on if at any time one’s clinging relaxed. He had been the only possible father confessor. Sexlessness was a primary necessity to that. In this particular case. For he knew, the thought emerged with unchallenged assurance, that her trouble concerned Philip and Philip’s fidelity. And instead of finding a priest, she had, just at this phase when the idea of embraces was altogether revolting to her, caught him embracing.

He glimpsed her present vision of the whole world as lying, betraying, and steamily, illicitly intertwined. And since his instincts and his habits of mind were all for resolving the problems of others and extracting whatever was helpful in the solution, since he liked his little hostess immensely and was ready not only to help in general but anxious to help her in particular, he did his best to push the still glowing image of Lady Catherine into the background of his mind and set himself to efface the bad impression their so intimate grouping had made upon Mrs. Rylands.

With an entirely mechanical submission to his initiative she was walking beside him towards the shade when he spoke.

“I was talking about myself to Lady Catherine,” he said and paused to help his silent companion down a stepway. “I think I betrayed a certain sense of my ungainliness. . . . I am ungainly. . . . Lady Catherine is full of generous impulsive helpfulness and her method of reassuring me was — dramatic and — tangible.”

Mrs. Rylands made no immediate reply.

A sc............