“It was very bad,” he said slowly.  “I didn’t know you had seen it.  What shall I do?  I promised to go back for him.”

“Lord Wandle—­Miss Boyce!” said Miss Raeburn’s sharp little voice behind Aldous.  Aldous, moving aside in hasty dismay, saw his aunt, looking very determined, presenting her tall neighbour, who bowed with old-fashioned deference to the girl on the sofa.

Lady Winterbourne looked with trepidation at Marcella.  But the social instinct held, to some extent.  Ninety-nine women can threaten a scene of the kind Lady Winterbourne dreaded, for one that can carry it through.  Marcella wavered; then, with her most forbidding air, she made a scarcely perceptible return of Lord Wandle’s bow.

“Did you escape in here out of the heat?” he asked her.  “But I am afraid no one lets you escape to-night.  The occasion is too interesting.”

Marcella made no reply.  Lady Winterbourne threw in a nervous remark on the crowd.

“Oh, yes, a great crush,” said Lord Wandle.  “Of course, we all come to see Aldous happy.  How long is it, Miss Boyce, since you settled at Mellor?”

“Six months.”

She looked straight before her and not at him as she answered, and her tone made Miss Raeburn’s blood boil.

Lord Wandle—­a battered, coarsened, but still magnificent-looking man of sixty—­examined the speaker an instant from half-shut eyes, then put up his hand to his moustache with a half-smile.

“You like the country?”

“Yes.”

As she spoke her reluctant monosyllable, the girl had really no conception of the degree of hostility expressed in her manner.  Instead she was hating herself for her own pusillanimity.

“And the people?”

“Some of them.”

And straightway she raised her fierce black eyes to his, and the man before her understood, as plainly as any one need understand, that, whoever else Miss Boyce might like, she did not like Lord Wandle, and wished for no more conversation with him.

Her interrogator turned to Aldous with smiling aplomb.

“Thank you, my dear Aldous.  Now let me retire.  No one must monopolise your charming lady.”

And again he bowed low to her, this time with an ironical emphasis not to be mistaken, and walked away.

Lady Winterbourne saw him go up to his wife, who had followed him at a distance, and speak to her roughly with a frown.  They left the room, and presently, through the other door of the library which opened on the corridor, she saw them pass, as though they were going to their carriage.

Marcella rose.  She looked first at Miss Raeburn—­then at Aldous.

“Will you take me away?” she said, going up to him; “I am tired—­take me to your room.”