“What?”

“I’m not going to stand this sort of thing, Hyde, not for a minute.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Lawrence, reddening slowly to his forehead.  But it was a lie:  he was not one of those who can overstep limits with impunity.  The streak of vulgarity again! and worse than vulgarity:  Andrew Hyde’s sardonic old voice was ringing in his ears, “Lawrence, you’ll never be a gentleman.”

“All right, we’ll leave it at that.  Only don’t do it again.”  Lawrence was dumb.  “Here’s Mrs. Clowes.”

Val rose as Laura came in, released at length from attendance on her husband.  “I heard you playing,” she said, giving him her hand with her sweet, friendly smile.  “So you’ve introduced yourself to Captain Hyde?  I hope you were nice to him, for my gratitude to him is boundless.  I haven’t seen Bernard looking so fit or so bright for months and months!  Now sit down, both of you, and we’ll have cigarettes and coffee.  Ring, Val, will you—? it’s barely half past ten.

“I can only stay for one cigarette, Laura:  I must get home to bed.”

“But, my dear boy, how tired you look!” exclaimed Laura.  “You do too much—­I’m sure you do too much.  He wears himself out, Lawrence—­oh! my scarf!” She was wearing a silver scarf over her black dress, and as she moved it fluttered up and caught on the chain round her throat.  “Unfasten me, please, Val,” she said, bending her fair neck, and Val was obliged laboriously to disentangle the silken cobweb from the spurs of her clear-set diamonds, a process which fascinated Lawrence, whose mind was more French than English in its permanent interest in women.  Certainly Val’s office of friend of the family was not less delicate because Laura, secure in her few years seniority, treated him like a younger brother!  Watching, not Val, but Val’s reflection in a mirror, Lawrence overlooked no shade of constraint, no effort that Val made to avoid touching with his finger-tips the satin allure of Laura’s exquisite skin.  “Poor miserable Val!” Suspicion was crystallizing into certainty.  “Or is it poor Bernard?  No, I swear she doesn’t know.  Does he know himself?”

A servant had brought in coffee, and Lawrence in his quality of cousin poured out two cups and carried them over to Laura and to Val.  “Well, I’m damned!” murmured Lawrence as Val refastened the clasp of the chain.  “Picturesque, all this.—­ Here, Val, here’s your coffee.”

“But do you know each other so well as that?” exclaimed Laura, arching her wren’s-feather eyebrows.

“I was an infant subaltern when Hyde knew me,” said Val laughing, “and he was a howling swell of a captain.  Do you remember that night you all dined with us, sir, when we were in billets?  We stood you champagne—­”

“Purchased locally.  I remember the champagne.”