He was, however, no sooner out of the house, the lofty stone hall of which had always impressed Mr. Dunn’s fanciful eye as being like a “holocaust”--by which he meant “mausoleum,” for Mr. Dunn had received the education proper to an English gentleman, and one can’t know everything--when he was sensible of a peculiar, unhomely feeling within his person; which he was not long in recognising as the prickings of his conscience, a disorder by which he was seldom assailed, for Mr. Dunn was a good young man. His thoughts, never profound but frequently vivid, quickly passed beyond his control. He thought of the lady on whom he had brought such cruel discomfiture. He saw her again as she sat at the table, her great blue eyes swept with astonished distaste, her sweet sad face white with sudden fear, whilst her husband sneered at her exquisite breeding as though all the seven devils were dancing on his poisoned antipodean tongue. “And all, dear God,” frantically thought Mr. Dunn, “about absolutely nothing!” For let us at once state frankly, and once and for all, that there was absolutely nothing between Mr. Dunn and Lady Vest. Mr. Dunn was a man of honour. While the Lady Vest was a lady of noble birth and fastidious habits, to whom the idea of the smallest infidelity must necessarily be repellent to a degree far beyond the soiled understanding of those society novelists who write sensationally about the state of inconstancy prevalent among people of condition. Among her high-minded habits, however, Lady Vest had always included, until her marriage to Lord Vest, the inoffensive distraction of dancing, at which she was notably graceful. But Lord Vest had revealed, on the very night of his marriage, the fact that he could not dance; had excused his disgusting reticence on that point until it was too late for her to change her mind on the ground of his love for her; which was so great, he had protested, that he did not know what he would do should he ever discover her dancing with any man; adding that in the frenzy of such a discovery he would not care to take long odds against the probability of his strangling her; so dark were the obsessions that clouded the Australian nobleman’s mind. Until the recent engagement of Mr. Dunn as his lordship’s private secretary Lady Vest had not so much as wavered from the letter of her promise to her husband, that she would dance nevermore. But chancing one afternoon on Mr. Dunn in the neighbourhood of Bond Street, and Mr. Dunn happening to say that he was partial to dancing, Lady Vest had, as though in a flash, realised the narrow tyranny of her husband’s prohibition, and had acceded to Mr. Dunn’s request that she should take a turn with him round the floor of a neighbouring dance-club.