Captain Pratt’s arm was crooked.  He conducted her in his best manner to the foot of the staircase and helped her into his hansom.  His manner was not so unctuous as his father’s, but it was slightly adhesive.  Lady Newhaven shuddered involuntarily as she took his arm.

Hugh followed.

“I hope you will both come and see my mother,” she said, with an attempt at graciousness.  “You know Lady Trentham, I think?”—­to Captain Pratt.

“Very slightly.  No.  Delighted!” murmured Captain Pratt, closing the hansom doors in an intimate manner.  “And if I could be of the least use at any time in taking your boys to the pantomime—­er—­only too glad.  The glass down, Richards!”

The hansom with its splendid bay horse rattled off.

Captain Pratt nodded to Hugh, who was still standing on the steps, and turned away to buy a box of matches from a passing urchin.  Then he turned up his fur collar, and proceeded leisurely on his way.

“Very stand-off both of them in the past,” he said to himself, “but they will have to be civil in future.  I wonder if he will make her keep her title.  Deuced awkward for them both though, only a month after Newhaven’s death.  I wish that sort of contre-temps would happen to me when I’m bringing in a lot of fellows suddenly.  An opening like that is all I want to give me a start, and I should get on as well as anybody.  The aristocracy all hang together, whatever Selina and Ada may say.  Money don’t buy everything, as the governor thinks.  But if you’re once in with ’em you’re in.”

* * * * *

Hugh went back to his room and locked himself in.  He was a delicate man, highly strung, and he had not slept the night before.  He collapsed into a chair and remained a long time, his head in his hands.

It was too horrible, this woman coming back upon him suddenly, like the ghost of some one whom he had murdered.  His momentary infatuation had been clean forgotten in his overwhelming love for Rachel.  His intrigue with Lady Newhaven seemed so long ago that it had been relegated to the same mental shelf in his mind as the nibbling of a certain forbidden ginger-bread when he was home for his first holidays.  He could not be held responsible for either offence after this immense interval of time.  It was not he who had committed them, but that other embryo self, that envelope of flesh and sense which he was beginning to abhor, through which he had passed before he reached himself, Hugh, the real man—­the man who loved Rachel, and whom Rachel loved.

He had not flinched when he came unexpectedly on Lady Newhaven.  At the sight of her a sudden passion of anger shot up and enveloped him as in one flame from head to foot.  His love for Rachel was a weapon, and he used it.  He did not greatly care about his own good name, but the good name of the man whom Rachel loved was a thing to fight for.  It was for her sake, not Lady Newhaven’s, that he had concocted the story of the mistaken rooms.  He should not have had the presence of mind if Rachel had not been concerned.