wondered whether perhaps this was not the rainy day Mellersh--Mellersh
was Mr. Wilkins--had so often encouraged her to prepare for, and
whether to get out of such a climate and into the small mediaeval
castle wasn't perhaps what Providence had all along intended her to do
with her savings. Part of her savings, of course; perhaps quite a
small part. The castle, being mediaeval, might also be dilapidated,
and dilapidations were surely cheap. She wouldn't in the lest mind a
few of them, because you didn't pay for dilapidations which were
already there, on the contrary--by reducing the price you had to pay
they really paid you. But what nonsense to think of it . . .

She turned away from the window with the same gesture of mingled
irritation and resignation with which she had laid down The Times, and
crossed the room towards the door with the intention of getting her
mackintosh and umbrella and fighting her way into one of the
overcrowded omnibuses and going to Shoolbred's on her way home and
buying some soles for Mellersh's dinner--Mellersh was difficult with
fish and liked only soles, except salmon--when she beheld Mrs.
Arbuthnot, a woman she knew by sight as also living in Hampstead and
belonging to the club, sitting at the table in the middle of the room
on which the newspapers and magazines were kept, absorbed, in her turn,
in the first page of The Times.

Mrs. Wilkins had never yet spoken to Mrs. Arbuthnot, who belonged
to one of the various church sets, and who analysed, classified,
divided and registered the poor; whereas she and Mellersh, when they
did go out, went to the parties of impressionist painters, of whom in
Hampstead there were many. Mellersh had a sister who had married one
of them and lived up on the Heath, and because of this alliance Mrs.
Wilkins was drawn into a circle which was highly unnatural to her, and