Presently she came back toward the sofa where Basil and “Antinoüs” were established. She was leaning on the arm of an Ambassador, extremely young-looking for so weighty a distinction, who was obviously delighted with his present rôle as _cavalière-servente_ to the most-looked-at woman in the room. Laurence, her pretty color heightened, her eyes sparkling with animation, was responding to his graceful compliments in faultless Italian, “flying her hands” as if really to the manner born. The two men on the sofa had risen, and the little group was now so close to Neville that he could hear every word distinctly. And suddenly through the archway of the music-room he saw Marguerite de Plenhöel standing by the concert piano, where Platnowsky had just installed himself, and half unconsciously he took a step in that direction, putting aside the curtain, and standing for a second irresolute and half revealed. Laurence’s eyes, meeting his, changed to extreme harshness, and in a voice new to her audience--especially to Basil--she asked him to have their carriage called. “Not before hearing Platnowsky!” remonstrated “Antinoüs.” “He is the nail of the evening--and looks it,” he added, indicating the interminable maestro, thin almost to emaciation, and topped by an exuberant mane of dull potato-colored hair, weeping-willowing across his melancholy brow. But Laurence was not attuned to humorous remarks just now, and with an impatient gesture she reiterated what might easily have been mistaken for a command, and encountered Basil’s glance of astonishment with a frown. “She is afraid of me,” Neville thought, as with a bow he passed on toward the music-room. “Afraid of me! Can it be possible? What does she take me for?” He felt very unhappy, almost ashamed, and especially puzzled. What did it all mean? Could this haughty, overbearing woman be the same who in the grace of all her girlish beauty had spoken so tenderly to him on the moonlit lawns of Seton Park less than a year ago? He glanced helplessly around. Marguerite’s white silhouette detached itself against the lemon-wood paneling of the great _salle-de-concert_, and toward Marguerite he went instinctively, like all those who needed comfort, or followed the search of the ideal. CHAPTER VI Persuade him--he is but a man-- When you have swung the lash above, Annoyed and hurt him all you can, That it was done for love. In the brougham taking them home at the stately speed of their Orloffs, neither Basil nor Laurence spoke. The distance was short, and in a few minutes the “_Porte s’il vous plâit_” of their imposing coachman resounded before the escutcheoned portals. The equipage turned into a closed court, stopped beneath the glass marquise, and the footman jumped to the carriage door at the precise moment that a _Suisse_ of heroic proportions and dazzling baldric gave notice of their coming, by three short strokes of his halberd on the tessellated floor of the entrance.