A wrestle with mental arithmetic showed me that the draught which I had
encountered nearly an hour before had cost me exactly one and a half
guineas.

Ordinarily I should have dismissed the matter from my mind, but for some
reason I had no sooner let the chauffeur go than I was tormented by a
persistent curiosity regarding the identity of his considerate mistress.
If I had not promised to rejoin Berry for lunch--a meal for which I was
already half an hour late--I should have gone to the Berkeley and
scrutinized the guests. The reflection that such a proceeding must only
have been unprofitable consoled me not at all, so contrary a maid is
Speculation. For the next two hours Vexation rode me on the curb. I
quarrelled with Berry, I was annoyed with myself, and when the
hall-porter at the Club casually observed that there was "a nasty wind,"
I agreed with such hearty and unexpected bitterness that he started
violently and dropped the pile of letters which he was searching on my
behalf.

A visit to Lincoln's Inn Fields, however, with regard to an estate of
which I was a trustee, followed by a sharp walk in the Park, did much to
reduce the ridiculous fever of which my folly lay sick, and I returned
home in a frame of mind almost as comfortable as that in which I had set
out.

It was half-past four, but no one of the others was in, so I ordered tea
to be brought to the library, and settled down to the composition of a
letter to _The Observer_.

I was in the act of recasting my second sentence, when the light went
out.