They made their tour. In the great drawing-room, seldom used by Jonathan, cedar-wood fires blazed at each end. Mrs. Pouting and two maids put glazed French covers on the armchairs and the bergère sofas.

“Summer-time uniforms,” said Jonathan, “but they chime with the flowers and are gay. Admire my flowers, Aubrey. Don’t they look pleasant against the linen-fold walls? Quite a tone-poem, I consider.”

“And when seven furious faces are added,” said Mandrake, “the harmony will be complete.”

“You can’t frighten me. The faces will be all smiles in less than no time, you may depend on it. And, after all, even if they are not to be reconciled, I shall not complain. My play will be less pretty but more exciting.”

“Aren’t you afraid that they will simply refuse to stay under the same roof with each other?”

“They will at least stay tonight; and tomorrow, I hope, will be so inclement that the weather alone will turn the balance.”

“Your courage is amazing. Suppose they all sulk in separate rooms?”

“They won’t. I won’t let ’em. Confess now, Aubrey, aren’t you a little amused, a little stimulated?”

Mandrake grinned. “I feel all the more disagreeable sensations of first-night nerves, but — all right, I’ll admit to a violent interest.”

Jonathan laughed delightedly and took his arm. “You must see the bedrooms and the ‘boudoir’ and the little smoking-room. I’ve allowed myself some rather childish touches but they may amuse you. Elementary symbolism. Character as expressed by vegetation. As the florists’ advertisements would have it, I have ‘said it with flowers.’ ”

“Said what?”

“What I think of everyone.”

They crossed the hall to the left of the front door and entered the room that Jonathan liked to call the “boudoir”— an Adam sitting-room painted a light green and hung with French brocades, whose pert garlands were repeated in nosegays which Jonathan had set in the window, and upon a spinet and a writing-desk.