I watched Betty as she circled past me held close in the hollow of Warriner's arm; she was looking up at him, her eyes intent and her cheeks glowing. I pushed through the throng and caught them temporarily halted in a re-entrant swirl of dancers. "I'll take the rest of this turn," I announced, with small pretense of civility. Warriner would have been fully justified in resenting my rudeness, for this was no ordinary case of give-and-take cutting in; but he instantly relinquished his claim, and I whirled Betty away to the farther end of the great hall. "We won't wait for supper," I said curtly. "You know Hilda well enough for that, and she won't mind. Or I don't care if she does." Betty's lower lip went out and her eyes flashed. But a woman, in an emergency, can summon a control over her nerves that mere man may only wonder at. "As you like, Hugh," she said with quiet composure. "I'll just slip up to the dressing room, and you can have the motor brought around to the side door, where it won't be noticed." We exchanged only a few, indifferent words on the way home, since Zack was acting as chauffeur and sat within easy earshot. Betty confronted me under the swinging hall lantern of "Hildebrand Hundred," her small figure straight and tense as a grenadier on parade. "Well?" she said briefly. "You know what I mean," I evaded weakly enough. But she only continued to look at me, and I had to come out in the open. "I object to your dancing with that man," I growled. "What man?" "Chalmers Warriner, of course." "Chalmers Warriner! Why----" Betty bit her lip and choked back the coming words. "Go on!" I demanded, instantly alert to the possible significance of that suddenly checked utterance. But Betty only shook her head--mutinously so as I chose to think in my green-eyed madness. "You won't tell me?" I persisted hotly. "I can't." "Then I've nothing more to say except just this: You are my wife, and so long as you continue to bear my name you are to have no communication of any kind with Mr. Warriner." Betty made no reply, and we parted without another word. I had to be in Calverton all the following day on some law business; and I had left the "Hundred" before Betty appeared at the breakfast table. When I returned, late in the afternoon, the house was fairly upside down with hurried preparations for a departure; everywhere trunks and handbags were being packed for the journey, and the station car was already in waiting at the front door. Betty met me as usual in the lower hall. I lifted my eyebrows interrogatively. "You know little Hugh has been feeling the hot weather of late," she answered steadily, "and Doctor Marcy strongly advised a change to a Northern climate." "Where are you going?" "To my Aunt Alice Crew's in Stockbridge. We can stay there through August and September." "And then?" "Probably to the Davidsons at Irvington-on-Hudson." "For how long?"