"It's Libertys', isn't it?" she said. "Well, I've a very good mind to make you take it back. It was promised for yesterday."
Then she saw her visitor, and gave a little start.
"Why, it's Lady Tasker! How delightful! Do come in! And do just excuse me--I shan't be a minute.... Why didn't this come yesterday? It was promised faithfully----"
She stepped outside to scold the carman, leaving Lady Tasker standing just within the green door.
"The orders is taken as they come, m'm----"
Now in reading what happened the next moment you must remember that Lady Tasker was very, very tired. Had she been less tired she might have wondered why one of the two maids she saw crossing to the tea-table under the copper beech had not been allowed to take in Mrs. Cosimo Pratt's parcel. And she would certainly have thought it extraordinary that she should be left standing alone while Mrs. Cosimo Pratt scolded the carrier, and wanted to know why the parcel had not been brought yesterday. But, tired as she was, her eyes had already rested on something that had momentarily galvanized even the weariness out of her. It was this:--
Seven or eight people sat in basket-chairs or stood talking; and, under the copper beech, as if Mrs. Pratt had just slid out of it, a hammock of coloured string still moved, slung from the beech to a sycamore beyond. Lady Tasker saw these things at once; she did not at once see what it was that stood just beyond the hammock.
Then it moved, and Lady Tasker raised her glass.
No doubt you have seen the cover of Mr. Wells's "Invisible Man." It will be remembered that all that can be seen of that afflicted person is his clothes; and all that Lady Tasker at first saw of the Invisible Man by the copper beech was his clothes. These were of light yellow tussore, with a white double collar and a small red tie, sharp-edged white cuffs and highly polished brown boots. At collar and cuffs the man ended.
And yet he did not end, for the lenses of a pair of spectacles made lurking lights in the shadow of the beech, a few inches above the white collar.
Then Lady Tasker, suddenly pale, dropped her glass. Between the collar and the spectacles a white gash of teeth had appeared. The Invisible Man had smiled, and at the same moment there had shown round the bole of the beech a second smoky shape, this one without teeth, but with white and mobile eyes instead.