"I don't understand."

She gave me a look of pity. "You always were so dense, Reggie. I will
tell you the whole thing from the beginning. You remember what I spoke
to you about, one day when we were lunching together? Well, I don't
suppose you have noticed it--I know what you are--but things have been
getting steadily worse. For one thing, Harold insisted on lengthening
his visits to the top room, and naturally Ponsonby complained. Hilda
tells me that she had to plead with him to induce him to stay on. Then
the climax came. I don't know if you recollect Amelia's brother Percy?
You must have met him when she was alive--a perfectly unspeakable
person with a loud voice and overpowering manners. Suddenly, out of a
blue sky, Harold announced his intention of inviting him to stay. It
was the last straw. This afternoon I received a telegram from poor
Hilda, saying that she was leaving Harold and coming to stay with me,
and a few hours later the poor child arrived at my apartment."

You mustn't suppose that I stood listening silently to this speech.
Every time she seemed to be going to stop for breath I tried to horn in
and tell her all these things which had been happening were not mere
flukes, as she seemed to think, but parts of a deuced carefully planned
scheme of my own. Every time I'd try to interrupt, Ann would wave me
down, and carry on without so much as a semi-colon.

But at this point I did manage a word in. "I know, I know, I know! I
did it all. It was I who suggested to Harold that he should lengthen
the meditations, and insisted on his inviting Percy to stay."

I had hardly got the words out, when I saw that they were not making
the hit I had anticipated. She looked at me with an expression of