The whole thing had begun in a very simple way--the gradual increase of tension from the early morning until towards evening had been produced by small incidents following upon the hasty marriage ceremony, which, as has been said, had produced a far deeper impression upon him than upon Katharine herself. The endless hours of waiting, the solitary luncheon, the waiting again, Katharine’s summary dismissal of him, almost without a word of explanation--then more waiting, and Miner’s tiresome questions, and the sudden call to the telephone, and stumbling against Crowdie--and all the rest of it. Small things, all of them, after the marriage itself, but able to produce at least a fit of extremely bad temper by their cumulative action upon such a character. Ralston was undoubtedly a dangerous man to exasperate at five o’clock on that Thursday afternoon. He had been summoned by Robert Lauderdale himself, and this had contributed not a little to the haste which had brought him into collision with Bright. The old gentleman had asked him to come up to his house at once; John had said that he would come immediately, but on asking a further question he found the communication closed. It immediately struck him that Katharine had not found uncle Robert at home in the morning, that she had very possibly gone to him again in the afternoon, and that they were perhaps together at that very moment, and had agreed to send for Ralston in order to talk matters over. It was natural enough, considering his strong desire to see Katharine before the ball, and his anxiety to hear Robert Lauderdale’s definite answer, upon which depended everything in the immediate present and future, that he should not have cared to waste time in exchanging civilities in the hall of the club with Bright, whom he saw almost every day, or with Crowdie, whom he detested. The rest has been explained. Nor was it at all unnatural that the three men should all have been simultaneously deceived into believing that he had been drinking more than was good for him. A man who is known to drink habitually can hardly get credit for being sober when he is perfectly quiet--never, when he is in the least excited. Ralston had been more than excited. He had been violent. He had disgraced himself and the club by a piece of outrageous brutality. If any one but Bright had suffered by it, there would have been a meeting of the committee within twenty-four hours, and John Ralston’s name would have disappeared from the list of members forever. It was fortunate for him that Bright chanced to be his best friend.