“She’s so enthusiastic, isn’t she?  Brenda, I mean,” Miss Tattersall went on, and as I listened I compared her to the stable-clock.  She, too, was a persistent outrage, a hindrance to whatever it was that I was waiting for.

Mrs. Sturton and her husband were coming back, with an appearance of unwillingness, into the warmth and light of the Hall.  The dear lady was still at her congratulations on the delightfulness of the evening, but they were tempered, now, by a hint of apology for “spoiling it—­to a certain extent—­I hope I haven’t—­by this unfortunate contretemps.”

The Jervaises were uncomfortably warm in their reassurances.  They felt, no doubt, the growing impatience of all their other visitors pressing forward with the reminder that if the Sturtons’ cab did not come at once, there would be no more dancing.

Half-way up the stairs little Nora Bailey’s high laughing voice was embroidering her statement with regard to the extra stroke of the stable-clock.

“I had a kind of premonition that it was going to, as soon as it began,” she was saying.

Gordon Hughes was telling the old story of the sentry who had saved his life by a similar counting of the strokes of midnight.

And at the back of my mind my daemon was still thrusting out little spurts of enthralling allegory.  The Sturtons and Jervaises had been driven in from the open.  They were taking refuge in their house.  Presently...

“Given it up?” I remarked with stupid politeness to Miss Tattersall.

“They’ve sent John round to the stables to inquire,” she told me.

I do not know how she knew.  “John” was the only man-servant that the Jervaises employed in the house; butler, footman, valet and goodness knows what else.

“Mrs. Sturton seems to be afraid of the night-air,” Miss Tattersall remarked with a complacent giggle of self-congratulation on being too modern for such prejudices.  “I simply love the night-air, don’t you?” she continued.  “I often go out for a stroll in the garden the last thing.”

I guessed her intention, but I was not going to compromise myself by strolling about the Jervaise domain at midnight with Grace Tattersall.

“Do you?  Yes,” I agreed, as if I were bound to admire her originality.

They are afraid of the night-air, my allegory went on, and having begun their retreat, they are now sending out their servant for help.  I began to wonder if I were composing the plot of a grand opera?

John’s return convinced me that I was not to be disappointed in my expectation of drama.

He came out from under the staircase through the red baize door which discreetly warned the stranger that beyond this danger signal lay the sacred mysteries of the Hall’s service.  And he came down to the central cluster of faintly irritated Sturtons and Jervaises, with an evident hesitation that marked the gravity of his message.  Every one was watching that group under the electric-lighted chandelier—­it was posed to hold the stage—­but I fancy that most of the audience were solely interested in getting rid of the unhappy Sturtons.