She looked up—­looked so sweetly up—­right into his eyes and smiled.

“I expect you are to take me into dinner,” she said; and at her words the man who had been talking to her murmured something meaningless and got out of their way.

“I believe so,” he said.

She rose and he noticed that the top of her head was just level with his coat lapel.  He wondered, with a miserable pang, where she came to on her husband’s coat and with the wonder his surging strength surged suddenly out to sea again and left him feeling like Samson when he awoke to the realization of his haircut.

“Dinner’s very late,” she said, quite as if life presented no problem whatever; “you see, it’s the first big company in the house.  We were only seventeen last night, and to-night we’re forty-five.  It makes a difference.”

“I can imagine so,” he said.  He was suddenly acutely aware of feeling very awkward, and of finding her different—­quite different from what she had seemed up in her brother’s room.

“What is it?” she asked after a minute, looking up at him; and then she showed that she was conscious of the change, for she added:  “Something has happened; Bob has been saying mean things about me to you?”

“Yes, he did tell me something,” he admitted; and just then the butler announced dinner.

“What did he tell you?” she asked, as they moved away.  “How could he say anything worse than what he said before me?”

“He told me something that was worse—­much worse.”

She looked troubled and as if she did not understand.

“But he said that I was a flirt, and that I couldn’t speak the truth, and that I drove people—­”

“Yes, I remember all that; but this was infinitely worse.”

“Infinitely worse!”

“Yes.”

She stopped in an angle where the big room dwindled into a narrow gallery, and stared astonished.

“I can’t at all understand,” she said.

“No, you can’t,” he said, “and I can’t tell you—­I mustn’t tell you—­how terrible it is to me to look at you and think of what he told me.”

After a second she went on again and presently they entered the dining-room.  The confusion of rustling skirts and sliding chairs quite covered their speech for a moment and made them seem almost alone.  Her hand had been resting on his arm and now she drew it out, looking up at him again as she did so.  Her eyes had a premonitory mist over them.

“For Heaven’s sake,” she said very earnestly, “tell me what he said?”

He was silent.

“Tell me,” she pleaded.

He was still silent.

“Tell me,” she said imperiously.

He continued silent.  They sat down.

“Mr. Denham,” she said, as she took up her napkin, and her voice grew very low, and yet he heard, “I don’t think that we can pretend to be joking any longer.  You are my brother’s friend, and I am a married woman.  Please treat me as you should.”