She took the old man by the arm and tried to draw him toward the side entrance. But the vision of Letitia in all the glory of evening dress had been the last touch to the colonel's enjoyment on this momentous evening. He seemed to have forgotten the repulse he had just received, and hung back from his daughter's persuasive hand, looking with courtly admiration at Miss Mason. She was keen enough to see that he would again overrule his daughter and add further to the embarrassment of the meeting, and sweeping her cloak round her, she said: "We must go too, or we'll never find the others. Good night." And with a little smiling nod she turned with her attendant cavaliers and plunged into the crowd. Tod, squeezing along beside her in the throng, said querulously: "Why didn't you introduce me? I'd have given that old man a song and dance, and he'd have asked me down there." But Gault, on her other side, said nothing. Once, as the crowd jostled her against him, she stole a glance in his direction, and found him looking away with frowning brows and a morose expression. She wondered if he had realized that her remarks to Viola indicated a previous acquaintance. If he had he would certainly be angry with her. Pearl and Tod were dropped on the way back, but Gault drove home with the others. He said he had been suffering from insomnia lately, and a walk would tire him out. Once in the house, Mortimer led him back into the dining-room to try a new wine that had been made on the vineyard of a mutual friend. Letitia and Maud were left alone in the drawing-room, where the former, expressing fatigue, threw herself down in a long chair, and the latter moved about turning down lamps, and here and there arranging with a housewife's hand the disarray of tumbled cushions and carelessly disposed draperies. Finally she passed out of the room, and Letitia, still sitting where she had dropped, heard her skirts rustling softly as she ascended the stairway. Letitia did not move. She wanted to see John before he left. If he had noticed her greeting of Viola Reed he would undoubtedly speak of it, and she would be given a chance to explain. With any other man but John it would have been nothing. But John was so peculiar, so reserved about his own affairs, so resentful, so terribly resentful, of anything like intrusion or interference. Letitia as she waited felt, much to her own surprise, that she was growing nervous, that her heart was beginning to beat uncomfortably hard and her breath to come uncomfortably short. Suddenly she heard his voice, in the room beyond, bidding Mortimer good night. She sat up quickly, and then as quickly looked down so as to give her figure the air of repose and indifference which was so far from her state of mind. He entered the room, and seeing her, said: "Oh, Tishy, are you still there?" The tone of his voice struck on her ear as singularly cold and aloof. Her nervousness increased, for she sincerely feared his anger.