“Hullo,” she said, looking up. “I’d forgotten you were coming.”      

       “Well, here I am, I’m afraid,” said Denis deprecatingly. “I’m awfully sorry.”      

       Mrs. Wimbush laughed. Her voice, her laughter, were deep and masculine. Everything about her was manly. She had a large, square, middle-aged face, with a massive projecting nose and little greenish eyes, the whole surmounted by a lofty and elaborate coiffure of a curiously improbable shade of orange. Looking at her, Denis always thought of Wilkie Bard as the cantatrice.     

  

       “That’s why I’m going to     

       Sing in op’ra, sing in op’ra,     

       Sing in op-pop-pop-pop-pop-popera.”      

  

       Today she was wearing a purple silk dress with a high collar and a row of pearls. The costume, so richly dowagerish, so suggestive of the Royal Family, made her look more than ever like something on the Halls.     

       “What have you been doing all this time?” she asked.     

       “Well,” said Denis, and he hesitated, almost voluptuously. He had a tremendously amusing account of London and its doings all ripe and ready in his mind. It would be a pleasure to give it utterance. “To begin with,”        he said...     

       But he was too late. Mrs. Wimbush’s question had been what the grammarians call rhetorical; it asked for no answer. It was a little conversational flourish, a gambit in the polite game.     

       “You find me busy at my horoscopes,” she said, without even being aware that she had interrupted him.     

       A little pained, Denis decided to reserve his story for more receptive ears. He contented himself, by way of revenge, with saying “Oh?” rather icily.     

       “Did I tell you how I won four hundred on the 

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