Her father went out to call on Mr Octavius Danberry-Phinn. He took his fishing gear with him as he intended to go straight on to his meeting with Lady Lacklander and to ease his troubled mind afterwards with the evening rise. He also took his spaniel Skip who was trained to good behaviour when he accompanied his master to the trout stream.

V

Lady Lacklander consulted the diamond-encrusted watch which was pinned to her tremendous bosom and discovered that it was now seven o’clock. She had been painting for half an hour and an all-too-familiar phenomenon had emerged from her efforts.

‘It’s a curious thing,’ she meditated, ‘that a woman of my character and determination should produce such a puny affair. However, it’s got me in better trim for Maurice Cartarette and that’s a damn’ good thing. An hour to go if he’s punctual and he’s sure to be that.’

She tilted her sketch and ran a faint green wash over the foreground. When it was partly dry she rose from her stool, tramped some distance away to the crest of a hillock, seated herself on her shooting-stick and contemplated her work through a lorgnette tricked out with diamonds. The shooting-stick sank beneath her in the soft meadowland so that the disc which was designed to check its descent was itself imbedded to the depth of several inches. When Lady Lacklander returned to her easel she merely abandoned her shooting-stick which remained in a vertical position and from a distance looked a little like a giant fungoid growth. Sticking up above intervening hillocks and rushes it was observed over the top of his glasses by the long-sighted Mr Phinn when, accompanied by Thomasina Twitchett, he came nearer to Bottom Bridge. Keeping on the right bank, he began to cast his fly in a somewhat mannered but adroit fashion over the waters most often frequented by the Old ’Un. Lady Lacklander, whose ears were as sharp as his, heard the whirr of his reel and, remaining invisible, was perfectly able to deduce the identity and movements of the angler. At the same time, far above them on Watt’s Hill, Colonel Cartarette, finding nobody but seven cats at home at Jacob’s Cottage, walked round the house and looking down into the little valley, at once spotted both Lady Lacklander and Mr Phinn, like figures in Nurse Kettle’s imaginary map, the one squatting on her camp stool, the other in slow motion near Bottom Bridge.

‘I’ve time to speak to him before I see her,’ thought the Colonel. ‘But I’ll leave it here in case we don’t meet.’ He posted his long envelope in Mr Phinn’s front door and then greatly troubled in spirit he made for the River Path and went down into the valley, the old spaniel, Skip, walking at his heels.