Shall we walk round the Gardens ?' Fielding chuckled again and assented.

He saw the curtain rising on his comedy.

For five minutes they paced up and down the pavement, with an interchange of simple questions on Drake's part, and discriminating answers on Fielding's--answers not wholly to encourage, but rather to promote a state of doubt, so much more interesting to the spectator.
When after the five minutes had elapsed they entered the house, they found that Mrs.Willoughby had arrived.
Clarice introduced Stephen Drake to Mrs.Willoughby.He saw a woman apparently in the early twenties, tall, with a broad white forehead, under masses of unruly black hair, and black eyebrows shadowing eyes of the colour of sea-shallows on an August morning.

The eyes were hard, he noticed, and the lips pressed together; she bowed to him without a word.
Hostility was evidently to be expected, and Drake wondered at this, for he knew Mrs.Willoughby to be Clarice's chief friend and confidante.

Mrs.
Willoughby fired the first shot of the combat as soon as they had sat down to lunch.