"Well, _au revoir_," she said. "I shall have more to say to you to-night. You dine with us, you know."
Jack Alston did not appear to be in any particular hurry to go upstairs again after Mrs. Brereton had gone. He waited on the door-step to see her get in, a groom who barely reached up to the horses' heads holding them while she took up the reins, then running stiffly to scramble in behind, as she went off down Park Lane in the most approved fashion, elbows square, a whip nearly perpendicular, and her horses stepping as if there were a succession of hurdles to negotiate, each to be taken in the stride. Her remarks about the importance of taking care had annoyed Jack a little, and still more his own annoyance at being annoyed. He had his own ideas about the management of his affairs, among which, about halfway down, came his wife, and the hint that she might, even conceivably, make matters unpleasant for him was the same sort of indignity as a suggestion that he could not quite manage his own dogs or horses. But after a minute he turned.
"For what time is her ladyship's carriage ordered?" he asked of the footman.
"Tell them to come round at a quarter to four instead," he said, and went slowly upstairs again.
He found his wife on the balcony where he had left her, with her maid beside her with two hats in her hand.
"Yes, that one will do," she said, "and send the other back. No, I will take it myself this afternoon. It is all wrong. Put it in a box and leave it in the hall. I am going out immediately."
The maid retired with the condemned hat, and while Marie pinned the other on, she turned to her husband.
"You wanted to speak to me?" she said, not lifting her eyes.
Jack looked at her in silence a moment, and lit another cigar.
"Finish pinning on your hat first," he said.
Marie found herself obeying him, with a sense of wanting, just in order to see what happened, not to do as he told her. However, she pinned her hat on.
"I wanted to say a few words to you about him. I find people have not forgotten that he was very much attached to you once."
She looked up at him with eyes of indifferent wonder, as if he had asked her some inane unanswerable sort of riddle.
"People are quite at liberty to remember or forget what they like, as far as I am concerned," she said. "Is that all you have to say to me? If so, I will go out, I think. The carriage ought to be round."