Then—­a surprising thing!  The awkward pause following the recitation was suddenly broken by a loud and uncontrollable laugh.  Doris, startled, turned to look at young Dunstable.  For it was he who had laughed.  Madame also shook off her stage trance to look—­a thunderous frown upon her handsome face.  The young man laughed on—­laughed hysterically—­burying his face in his hands.  Madame Vavasour—­all attitudes thrown aside—­ran up to him in a fury.

“Why are you laughing?  You insult me!—­you have done it before.  And now before strangers—­it is too much!  I insist that you explain!”

She stood over him, her eyes blazing.  The youth, still convulsed, did his best to quiet the paroxysm which had seized him, and at last said, gasping: 

“I was—­I was thinking—­of your reciting that at Crosby Ledgers—­to my mother—­and—­and what she would say.”

Even under her rouge it could be seen that the poetess turned a grey white.

“And pray—­what would she say?”

The question was delivered with apparent calm.  But Madame’s eyes were dangerous.  Doris stepped forward.  Her uncle stayed her with a gesture.  He himself rose, but Madame fiercely waved him aside.  Miss Wigram, in the distance, had also moved forward—­and paused.

“What would she say?” demanded Madame, again—­at the sword’s point.

“I—­I don’t know—­” said young Dunstable, helplessly, still shaking.  “I—­I think—­she’d laugh.”

And he went off again, hysterically, trying in vain to stop the fit.  Madame bit her lip.  Then came a torrent of Italian—­evidently a torrent of abuse; and then she lifted a gloved hand and struck the young man violently on the cheek.

“Take that!—­you insolent—­you—­you barbarian!  You are my fiance,—­my promised husband—­and you mock at me; you will encourage your stuck-up mother to mock at me—­I know you will!  But I tell you—­”

The speaker, however, had stopped abruptly, and instead of saying anything more she fell back panting, her eyes on the young man.  For Herbert Dunstable had risen.  At the blow, an amazing change had passed over his weak countenance and weedy frame.  He put his hand to his forehead a moment, as though trying to collect his thoughts, and then he turned—­quietly—­to look for his hat and stick.

“Where are you going, Herbert?” stammered Madame.  “I—­I was carried away—­I forgot myself!”

“I think not,” said the young man, who was extremely pale.  “This is not the first time.  I bid you good morning, Madame—­and good-bye!”

He stood looking at the now frightened woman, with a strange, surprised look, like one just emerging from a semi-conscious state; and in that moment, as Doris seemed to perceive, the traditions of his birth and breeding had returned upon him; something instinctive and inherited had reappeared; and the gentlemanly, easy-going father, who yet, as Doris remembered, when matters were serious “always got his way,” was there—­strangely there—­in the degenerate son.