“Dimmy,” she commanded firmly, “go out at once. A great deal depends on it. Go out at once. Don’t wait!” He began to say something about his wife and a carriage. “_Go out at once!_” said Mary Smith. He tried to say something about his hat and coat. Some yards before them at the open door the noise of a carriage was heard and there were servants waiting. Behind them more servants. But Mary Smith knew her world. It was a choice of evils, and George Mulross Demaine went out into the night, hatless and coatless. The policemen were pleased to see such familiarity among the great. They doubted not that the gentleman was taking the air, but they wondered why he walked so very rapidly eastward through Mayfair. Meanwhile from the carriage the daughter of Theocritus C. Benson came out, not without decision, and very soon the rooms of that house were filled and even its Moravian music dominated by the acuteness of her laugh and the tremendous decision of her tread. When every one had gone, one hat and coat remained. The footman pawned them: they were those of George Mulross Demaine. He, poor fellow, saw in all this nothing but that eternity of bad luck to which he was born. When his wife asked him next day why he had left the Petheringtons’ so early, he told some ordinary lie: he had left indeed because one wiser than he had told him to leave, but he could make neither head nor tail of the whole affair: and his foot hurt him where the Bear had crushed it. CHAPTER VI Easter, as those who survive will know, fell early in 1915--to be exact, upon April 4th; Ole Man Benson had returned on the 11th; on the 12th Mary had seen Dolly; and the week after Ole Man Benson’s return to these shores, the week after he had delivered his important and somewhat depressing news to the young household, the week after Mary and Dolly had conferred at the Petheringtons’--was the week in which Parliament met after the Recess, the third week in April. In that week also there began to crop up here and there unexpectedly, beautifully, like the spring flowers, short newspaper notes upon George Mulross Demaine. They were notes of where he had been, whether he had been there or not,--at least at first they were notes of that kind. There had always been some such notes on him in the papers, but they seemed to be getting numerous. The public would hear that George Mulross loved his great poodle dog; next that the pressure of his engagements forbade him to open an Enormous Institution for the Cultivation and Study of Virulent Diseases, and in connection with this news the Institution was described at great length, and the passionate regrets at the absence of George Mulross Demaine sounded like a small but perceptible dirge in the corners of the daily press.