agreeing, I ran upstairs to fetch my racquet.

Mrs. Cavendish was coming down the stairs. It may have been my
fancy, but she, too, was looking odd and disturbed.

"Had a good walk with Dr. Bauerstein?" I asked, trying to appear
as indifferent as I could.

"I didn't go," she replied abruptly. "Where is Mrs. Inglethorp?"

"In the boudoir."

Her hand clenched itself on the banisters, then she seemed to
nerve herself for some encounter, and went rapidly past me down
the stairs across the hall to the boudoir, the door of which she
shut behind her.

As I ran out to the tennis court a few moments later, I had to
pass the open boudoir window, and was unable to help overhearing
the following scrap of dialogue. Mary Cavendish was saying in
the voice of a woman desperately controlling herself:

"Then you won't show it to me?"

To which Mrs. Inglethorp replied:

"My dear Mary, it has nothing to do with that matter."

"Then show it to me."