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    “In fact,” Miss Hammond went on, “I have been invited to take tea tomorrow afternoon with a Very Important Person. I do wish you would come with me, Lady Torrance. You would be most impressed.
    He is a famous man who plans to support my cause. But it’s hush-hush. Very. ”
    “Oh, please call me Annie.”
    “Annie, then. And you must call me Mary. I gather from your tone that your recent marriage is not a happy one.”
    But Annie would not discuss her husband. “Who is this V.I.P.?” she asked.
    Miss Hammond looked about her in the manner of a stage villain and whispered, “Mr. Shaw-Bufford.”
    “What? The chancellor of the exchequer?”
    “Shh! The same.”
    “I find it hard to believe . . .”
    “Oh, I know. But wait until you meet him.”

    “Is his wife . . . ?”
    “He is not married.”
    “Then I don’t see . . .”
    “You will. Only say you’ll come.”
    “Very well,” said Annie.
    “Good! Splendid!” exclaimed Miss Hammond. “I shall call at your hotel for you at quarter to five tomorrow. The chancellor has a villa just outside the town.”
    When Annie returned to the hotel and had been made ready for bed by Barton, she sat in front of the open window, looking out at the sea and wondering whether she had suffered from temporary insanity.
    She, Annie, did not hate men. She wished she did. She wished she could remember her husband’s kisses with revulsion.
    But her whole treacherous body ached and burned for him.

    * * *
Mary Hammond was nuts. Absolutely, definitely, and quite positively nuts. If the chancellor of the exchequer was anywhere, it was not in Britlingsea. Mr. Shaw-Bufford was reported in the papers to be a sort of eighteenth-century gentleman, cultured, austere, with a biting wit. He had hoped, it was said, to be chosen by his party to be prime minister, but they had chosen the fiery Scotsman, James Macleod, instead.
    But one thing was sure. Mr. Shaw-Bufford was too grand and too ambitious a politician ever to be seen in the company of someone like Miss Hammond.
    Now mature, sensible, and grown-up people who wish to get out of an engagement send a letter of apology by hand, or telephone if they are lucky enough to have that wonder of science. But immature young people like Annie do the first thing that comes naturally, and so Annie decided simply to give Miss Hammond the slip. She would go out walking at four-thirty, thereby neatly avoiding that lady, and she would leave Barton to make her apologies.
    And so at precisely four-thirty the next afternoon, Annie tripped lightly down the red-carpeted steps of the Grand Hotel and across the palm-tree-studded expanse of the entrance lounge—and straight into the massive bulk of Miss Hammond, who was, it seemed, parked across the hotel entrance.
    “So you are early just like me, Annie,” said Miss Hammond. “I didn’t tell Mr. Shaw-Bufford that you were coming. That is going to be our little surprise.”
    “Yes,” said Annie, gloomily.
    Mary Hammond had at least looked like a sensible woman in the meeting hall last night. But today she seemed quite eccentric. Despite the heat of the afternoon, she was still wearing the tweeds, tie, and celluloid collar. Furthermore, she had cropped her gray hair, causing Annie to wonder why this man-hater should do her best to try to look like one.
    Annie still did not believe that she was to meet Mr. Shaw-Bufford. But after they had walked a little way out of the town, Miss Hammond stopped in front of an imposing villa and pushed open one of the wrought-iron gates.
    The gentleman who answered the door was Mr. Shaw-Bufford in person. Annie had seen photographs of him in The Illustrated London News.
    He was a tall, thin man of about forty-five, with a narrow, almost monkish face with deep-set eyes and thin mouth. His hair was silver.
    “Why, Miss Hammond,” he said in a dry, precise voice. “Who have we here? I thought I had made it plain that . . .”
    “Oh, but this is the Marchioness