Tom Courtland stood his ground firmly and answered civilly, though with a surly rough tone in his voice. His wife was still very quiet, yet Raymore and Grantley exchanged apprehensive looks; the lull before the storm is a well-worked figure of speech, but they knew it applied very well to Lady Harriet. "You're going home, then?" "Not just now." "Where are you going?" "To the club." "What club?" "Is my cab there?" Grantley called to the butler. "Not yet, sir; there'll be one directly." "What club?" demanded Lady Harriet again. "What does it matter? I haven't made up my mind. I'm only going to have a rubber." Then it came--what Sibylla had been told about, what the others had seen before now. They were all forgotten--host and fellow-guests, even the servants, even the cabman, who heard the outburst and leant down from his high seat, trying to see. It was like some physical affliction, an utter loss of self-control; it was a bare step distant from violence. It was the failure of civilisation, the casting-off of decency, a being abandoned to a raw fierce fury. "Club!" she cried, a deep flush covering her face and all her neck. "Pretty clubs you go to hard on midnight! I know you, I know you too well, you--you liar!" Sibylla crept behind Grantley, passing her hand through his arm. Tom Courtland stood motionless, very white, a stiff smile on his lips. "You liar!" she said once again, and without a look at any of them swept down the steps. She moved grandly. She came to the door of her brougham, which the footman held for her. The window was drawn up. "Have you been driving with the windows shut?" "Yes, my lady." "I told you to keep them down when it was fine. Do you want to stifle me, you fool?" She raised the fan she carried; it had stout ivory sticks and a large knob of ivory at the end. She dashed the knob against the window with all her strength; the glass was broken and fell clattering on the pavement as Lady Harriet got in. The footman shut the door, touched his hat, and joined the coachman on the box. With his pale face and set smile, with his miserable eyes and bowed shoulders, Tom Courtland went down the steps to his cab. Neither did he speak to any of them. At last Raymore turned to Sibylla. "I'm so sorry it happened to-night--when you were here," he said. "What does it mean?" she gasped. She looked from Grantley to Raymore and back again, and read the answer in their faces. They knew where Tom Courtland had gone. Grantley patted her hand gently, and said to Raymore: "Well, who could stand a savage like that?" It was the recognition of a ruin inevitable and past cure. CHAPTER V THE BIRTH OF STRIFE