"Indeed, they don't. Think they are ladies nowadays. Four hours
off has that girl had to-day, although she was out on Wednesday.
Then she has the impudence to allow someone to ring her up here
at the house; and finally I discover her upsetting the table
after Benson had laid it and after I had rearranged it."

She glanced indignantly in the direction of the lobby. "Perhaps
one day," she concluded, pathetically, as she walked slowly from
the room, "we shall find a parlourmaid who is a parlourmaid. Good
evening, sir."

"Good evening," said Harley, quietly amused to be made the
recipient of these domestic confidences.

He continued to smile for some time after the door had been
closed. His former train of ideas was utterly destroyed, but for
this he was not ungrateful to the housekeeper, since the
outstanding disadvantage of that strange gift resembling
prescience was that it sometimes blunted the purely analytical
part of his mind when this should have been at its keenest. He
was now prepared to listen to what Sir Charles had to say and to
judge impartially of its evidential value.

Wandering from side to side of the library, he presently found
himself standing still before the mantelpiece and studying a
photograph in a silver frame which occupied the centre of the
shelf. It was the photograph of an unusually pretty girl; that is
to say, of a girl whose beauty was undeniable, but who belonged
to a type widely removed from that of the ordinary good-looking
Englishwoman.