“Well, I suppose I must give them the opportunity of behaving properly,” said Claire, referring to Mrs. Harter, and she wrote a note and sent it to Queen Street by hand, expressing a perfunctory hope that Mrs. Harter would “bring” her husband to the theatricals and the dance. None of us were exactly surprised, but all of us were perhaps more or less conscious of obscure excitement, when Mrs. Harter, in a laconic note, accepted Claire’s invitation on behalf of herself and Mr. Harter. _Chapter Thirteen_ Martyn Ambrey, evidently desirous of showing me what a strongly individual viewpoint he possessed, told me that evening that he felt “Mr. Harter,” as we all called him, in faint mimicry of his wife’s invariable phrase, to be very much more worth seeing than the theatricals themselves. I did not tell him that I felt exactly the same. He would probably not have believed me. By seven o’clock the house was full of people, most of them in a state of great disorder and agitation. People were dressing, or even undressing, in almost every room. At last Claire appeared in the hall in a very beautiful black velvet gown. “They’ll be ready by nine o’clock,” she said confidently. The curtain was to go up at nine. The performers, all except Mrs. Harter, had dined early at the Manor. She and her husband arrived after dinner. “Mr. and Mrs. Harter.” Whatever her _gaucheries_, Mrs. Harter knew how to enter a room--an art that is not a common one nor--generally--an acquired one. She moved remarkably well. Harter followed her. The word “nondescript” is the one that first occurs to me, in attempting to describe him, and the next one is “unwholesome.” He was a small man, sandy-haired, with a sallow, fretful face and narrow shoulders. He seemed to walk like a cat--almost, but never quite, on the tips of his toes. When his wife, in her abrupt, graceless fashion, said, by way of introduction, “This is Mr. Harter,” he bowed stiffly. Almost at once Mrs. Harter, obviously constrained, suggested that she ought to go and change her dress, and Claire took her away. I gave Harter a drink. He was a difficult man to talk with, noncommittal and without humor. It was a relief to him, without a doubt, when Mr. and Mrs. Leeds were announced. I performed the usual introductions, but Leeds listens only to his own voice, never to that of anybody else. He said, “How d’ye do,” and in the same breath went on to talk of the play, and ended his sentence with a hearty laugh and the pleasing observation: “Amateur theatricals almost always lead to a scandal of some sort, that’s the beauty of them. Somebody runs off with somebody else’s wife--that sort of thing. I’ve seen it happen time and time again--”