“She may be fond of him, after all.”

Mr. Ayrton spoke musingly.

“Of course she is,” said Phyllis, with a positiveness that was designed to convince herself that she believed her own statement.

“And he may be fond of her—­yes, at times,” resumed Mr. Ayrton.  “That toilet of hers seems to have been the only happy element in the game of cross-purposes which was played to-night.”

“Ah,” whispered the girl.

“Yes; it was in inspiration.  She could not have expected her husband to-night.  What a dress!  Even a husband would be compelled to admit its fascination.  And she said she meant to wear it at the opera to-night.  It was scarcely an opera toilet, was it?”

“Ella’s taste is never at fault, papa.”

“I suppose not.  I wonder if he is capable of appreciating the—­the—­let us say, the inspiration of that toilet.  Is that, I wonder, the sort of dress that a man likes his wife to wear when she welcomes him home after an absence of some months?  No matter it was exquisite in every detail.  Curious, her coming here and waiting after she had learned that you were out, was it not; from nine o’clock—­that fateful hour!—­to-night.”

“I think she must have felt—­lonely,” said Phyllis.  “She seemed so glad to see me—­so relieved.  She meant to stay with me all night, poor thing!  Oh, why should her husband stay away from her for months at a time?  It is quite disgraceful!”

“I think that we had better go to bed,” said her father.  “If we begin to discuss abstract questions of temperament we may abandon all hope of sleep tonight.  We might as well try to fathom Herbert Courtland’s reasons for going to yacht with so uncongenial a party as Lord Earlscourt’s.  Good-night, my dear!”

He kissed her and went upstairs.  She did not follow him immediately.  She stood in the center of the room, and over her sweet face a puzzled expression crept, as a single breath of wind passes over the smooth surface of a lake on a day when no wind stirs a leaf.

She thought first of Herbert Courtland, which of itself was a curious incident.  How did it come that he had yielded so easily to the invitation of Lord Earlscourt to accompany him on his cruise in the yacht Water Nymph? (Lord Earlscourt’s imagination in the direction of the nomenclature of his boats as well as his horses was not unlimited.)

But this was just the question which her father had suggested as an example of a subject of profitless discussion.  She remembered this, and asked herself if it was likely that she, having at her command fewer data than her father bearing upon this case, should make a better attempt than he made at its solution.  Her father had seen Herbert Courtland since he had agreed to go on the cruise, and was therefore in the better position to arrive at a reasonable conclusion in regard to the source of the impulse upon which Mr. Courtland had acted; so much she thought certain.  And yet her father had suggested the profitless nature of such an investigation, and her father was certainly right.