Fisher, nor Lady
Caroline, it would have been either herself or Lotty. Mrs. Arbuthnot
could not help feeling this as she sat down, and Mrs. Fisher, the hand
which Ruskin had wrung suspended over the pots before her, inquired,
"Tea or coffee?" She could not help feeling it even more definitely
when Mrs. Fisher touched a small gong on the table beside her as though
she had been used to that gong and that table ever since she was
little, and, on Francesca's appearing, bade her in the language of
Dante bring more milk. There was a curious air about Mrs. Fisher,
thought Mrs. Arbuthnot, of being in possession; and if she herself had
not been so happy she would have perhaps minded.
Mrs. Wilkins noticed it too, but it only made her discursive
brain think of cuckoos. She would no doubt immediately have begun to
talk of cuckoos, incoherently, unrestrainably and deplorably, if she
had been in the condition of nerves and shyness she was in last time
she saw Mrs. Fisher. But happiness had done away with shyness--she was
very serene; she could control her conversation; she did not have,
horrified, to listen to herself saying things she had no idea of saying
when she began; she was quite at her ease, and completely natural. The
disappointment of not going to be able to prepare a welcome for Mrs.
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