“Oh--Crowdie talks like a fool about it. I suppose Jack was a little depressed, or something, and had been trying to screw himself up a bit. Anyway, he looked rather wild, and I tried to persuade him to stay a little while before going out of the club--it was in the hall, you know. I behaved like an ass myself--you know I’m awfully obstinate. He really did look a little wild, though! I held his arm--just like that, you know--” he laid his broad hand upon Katharine’s glove--“and then, somehow, we got fooling together--there in the hall--and he tripped me up on my back, and ran out. It was all over in a minute; and I was rather angry at the time, because Crowdie and little Frank Miner were there, and a couple of servants. But I give you my word, I didn’t say anything beyond making them all four swear that they wouldn’t tell--” “And this is the result!” said Katharine, with a sigh. “What was that he said about being turned out of the club?” “Crowdie? Oh--some nonsense or other! He felt his ladyship offended because there had been a bit of a wrestling match in the hall of his club, that’s all, and said he meant to leave it--” “No--but about Jack being turned out--” “It’s all nonsense of Crowdie’s. Men are turned out of a club for cheating at cards, and that sort of thing. Besides, Jack’s popular with most of the men. I don’t believe you could get a committee to sit on his offences--not if he locked the oldest member up in the ice-chest, and threw the billiard-table out of the window. He says he has no friends--but it’s all bosh, you know--everybody likes him, except that doughy brother-in-law of mine!” Katharine was momentarily comforted by Bright’s account of the matter, delivered in his familiar, uncompromising fashion. But she was very far from regaining her composure. She saw that Bright was purposely making light of the matter; and in the course of the silence, which lasted several minutes after he had finished speaking, it all looked worse than it had looked before she had known the exact truth. She felt, too, an instinct of repulsion from Ralston, which she had never known, nor dreamed possible. Could he not have controlled himself a few hours longer? It was their wedding day. Twelve hours had not passed from the time when they had left the church together until he had been drunk--positively drunk, to the point of knocking down his best friend in such a place as a club. She could not deny the facts. Even Hamilton Bright, kind--more than kind, devoted--did not attempt to conceal the fact that Ralston had been what he called ‘lively.’ And if Bright could not try to make him out to have been sober, who could? And they had been married that morning! If he had been sober--the word cut her like a whip--if he had been sober, they would at that very moment have been sitting together--planning their future--perhaps in that very corner.