The musician did not laugh any more, and Norah's big eyes began to shine again. Lady Joan felt she had fully deserved that little bit of revenge. But it was not amusing enough to carry any further, and she was beginning to weary of the protracted love-making of the day, especially now that she was no longer a principal actor in the play. So she folded up her work elaborately, and pinned it in a white silk handkerchief, and put her hand on her mouth to conceal a yawn. "It has been the longest day I have ever spent. I suppose it is the weather. Would you shut the piano, Mr. Raleigh? You look tired to death, Norah, and I am going to take you to bed. Come along at once, please." They all rose to their feet, and there was an embarrassing moment. But Lady Joan took another little bit of revenge here, and kept her arm round Norah's waist, and her sharp eyes on both of them. "You will come to breakfast to-morrow, and bring Sonny with you? Say good-night and come, Norah, I am so sleepy." So they all shook hands frigidly, and the musician asked what time breakfast was; and they left him alone in the long drawing-room, and went upstairs. Lady Joan still found him there when she came down again, half-an-hour later; he was at the piano, but he got up as she came in. "You are the finest woman I ever met," he said with emotion. She made a gesture of impatience. "Don't cover me with virtues I don't possess; I can't stand it," she said sharply; she had a very unmusical voice, he thought. "Don't you know that my god is expediency? It is the only one that is any good for this world. I don't want you to marry Norah, or I should not have come back to the inn to ask you to marry me. Do you suppose my pride suffered nothing by that? However, you are going to marry her because it is absolutely the only way out of it, and I have been obliged to give in to you both. But for Heaven's sake don't imagine I am doing it from unselfishness, or any of that bosh, because I'm not." "Then you have not forgiven me?" he asked humbly. "I shall never forgive you," said Lady Joan, decidedly; "is it not an insult that you should suppose me capable of forgiveness?" "Perhaps it is," said the musician, thoughtfully. "Why was I born so accursedly unlucky?"