His feelings were evidently too much for him. He turned with rude abruptness, and looking about him, seemed to become aware that the eyes of almost everybody in the room were fixed on him. He cast a despairing glance to where Mrs. Harbinger and Mrs. Croydon were for the moment standing together, and then started in miserable flight toward the door. At the threshold he encountered Graham the butler, who presented him with a handful of letters. "Will you please give the letters to Mrs. Harbinger?" Graham said, and vanished. Barnstable looked after the butler, looked at the letters, looked around as if his head were swimming, and then turned back into the drawing-room. He walked up to the hostess, and held out the letters in silence, his fluffy face a pathetic spectacle of embarrassed woe. "What are these?" Mrs. Harbinger asked. He shook his head, as if he had given up all hope of understanding anything. "The butler put them in my hands," he murmured. "Upon my word, Mrs. Harbinger," spoke up Mrs. Croydon, seeming more offended than there was any apparent reason for her to be, "you have the most extraordinary butler that ever existed." Mrs. Harbinger threw out her hands in a gesture by which she evidently disclaimed all responsibility for Graham and his doings. "Extraordinary! Why, he makes my life a burden. There is no mistake he cannot make, and he invents fresh ones every day. Really, I know of no reason why the creature is tolerated in the house except that he makes a cocktail to suit Tom." "Dat ees ver' greet veertue," Count Shimbowski commented genially. "I do not agree with you, Count," Miss Wentstile responded stiffly. The spinster had been hovering about the Count ever since his accident with the teacup, apparently seeking an opportunity of snubbing him. "Oh, but I die but eef Mees Wentsteele agree of me!" the Count declared with his hand on his heart. Mrs. Croydon in the meanwhile had taken the letters from the hand of Barnstable, and was looking at them with a scrutiny perhaps closer than was exactly compatible with strict good-breeding. "Why, here is a letter that has never been posted," she said. Mr. Harbinger took the whole bundle from her hand. "I dare say," was his remark, "that any letter that's been given to Graham to mail in the last week is there. Why, this letter is addressed to Christopher Calumus." May Calthorpe moved forward so quickly that Mrs. Harbinger, who had extended her hand to take the letters from her husband, turned to restrain the girl. Mrs. Croydon swayed forward a little. "That is the author of 'Love in a Cloud,'" she said with a simper of self-consciousness. Mrs. Neligage, who was standing with Bradish and Alice at the moment, made a grimace. "She'll really have the impudence to take it," she said to them aside. "Now see me give that woman a lesson."