I looked for Bob both at and after dinner, but we were never within speaking distance and I fancied he avoided even my eye.  What had Mrs. Lascelles said?  He looked redder and browner and rougher in the face, but I heard that he would hardly open his lips at table, that he was almost surly on the subject of his exploit.  Everybody else appeared to me to be speaking of it, or of Bob himself; but I had him on my nerves and may well have formed an exaggerated impression about it all.  Only I do not forget some of the things I did overhear that day, and night; and they now had the effect of sending me in search of Bob, since Bob would not come near me.  “I will have it out with him,” I grimly decided, “and then get out of this myself by the first train going.”  I had had quite enough of the place that had enchanted me up to the last four-and-twenty hours.  I began to see myself back in Elm Park Gardens.  There, at least, if also there alone, I should get some credit for what I had done.

It was no use looking for Bob upon the terrace now; yet I did look there, among other obvious places, before I could bring myself to knock at his door.  There was a light in his room, so I knew that he was there, and he cried out admittance in so sharp a tone that I fancied he also knew who knocked.  I found him packing in his shirt-sleeves.  He received me with a stare in exact keeping with his tone.  What on earth had Mrs. Lascelles said?

“Going away?” I asked, as a mere preliminary, and I shut the door behind me.  Bob followed the action with raised eyebrows, then flung me the shortest possible affirmative, as he bent once more over the suit-case on the bed.

But in a few seconds he looked up.

“Anything I can do for you, Clephane?”

“That depends where you are going.”

Bob went on packing with a smile.  I guessed where he was going.  “I thought there might be something pressing,” he remarked, without looking up again.

“There is,” said I.  “There is something you can do for me on the spot.  You can try to believe that I have not meant to be quite such a skunk as I may have seemed—­to you,” I was on the point of adding, but I stopped short of that advisedly, as I thought of Mrs. Lascelles also.

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Bob, in a would-be airy tone that carried its own contradiction.  “All’s fair, according to the proverb; I no more blame you than you would have blamed me.  I hope, on the contrary, that I may congratulate you.”

And he stood up with a look which, coupled with his words, made it my turn to stare.

“Indeed you may not,” said I.

“Aren’t you engaged to her?” he asked.

“Good God, no!” I cried.  “What made you think so?”

“Everything!” exclaimed Bob, after a moment’s pause of obvious bewilderment.  “I—­you see—­I had a note from Mrs. Lascelles herself!”

“Yes?” said I, carefully careless, but I wanted more than ever to know that missive’s gist.