Part 121

"Stay.... Who are the persons who disapprove of the announcement?"

"My Bingo, for one. Not that anything the dear old stupid says matters in the slightest. And--and Toby."

"'Toby'?"

"I mean Lord Beauvayse."

"Tell him I quite approve. He should know that in this matter it was for me to decide."

"Certainly, dear."

"Whose is the other objecting voice?"

"The Chief thinks I ... we ... it ... I rather fancy that he used the word 'precipitate' in expressing his opinion."

"Refer him to me if he expresses it again."

"Of course, dear, since you ..."

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye, dear. If Biddy Bawne hadn't been a nun," reflected Lady Hannah, as she went out of the Matron's office and back to her patients, who had long ago dined, "I think she would have made rather a despotic Empress. 'Refer him to me,' indeed. What is it, Sergeant? Don't say I'm rung up again."

But the one-armed porter was positive on the subject, and her little ladyship went back. This last communication proved a puzzling one.

"You there?"

"I am Lady Hannah Wrynche. Where are you?"

There was a brief hesitation. A thickish man's voice said:

"I don't know as that matters."

"Who are you?"

There was another hesitation. Then the stranger parried with a question:

"You write them weekly screeds in the Siege Gazette?"

"I am responsible for some of the social paragraphs. Kindly say who is speaking?"

"Nobody that matters much. Can you tell me where Miss Mildare lives?"

"Not without knowing who you are."

"You may call me an old friend of hers," aid the thickish, lisping voice, with a sluggish chuckle in it that the little woman at the other end of the wire had heard ... where?...

"If you are an old friend of the young lady you mention, how is it you don't know her address?" she demanded.

"Keep her address all you want to. Only next time you come alongside her give her a message for me. Ask her if she remembers the Free State Hotel on the veld, three days' trek from Dreipoort, and Bough, who was her friend?"

Lady Hannah repeated:

"'And Bough, who was her friend.' You are Bough----?"