“No, thanks, dear,” answered Miss Grunderson, who would have endured tortures rather than say “thank you,” when fashion required that she should say “thanks.” “I don’t think I _will_ take off my things. Mrs. Tredethlyn doesn’t seem very well; and it’s almost too late for dinner; so I think I’ll just go up to the morning-room, and rest for a few minutes before I go home. The carriage needn’t be kept, you know, please,” added Miss Grunderson, to a male domestic hovering in the shadowy depths of the hall; “for I can have a cab fetched when I want to go.” Mr. Tredethlyn had followed his wife to the drawing-room; and the two girls standing at the foot of the staircase heard one of the doors close with a sonorous bang. Miss Desmond went up-stairs, and Miss Grunderson followed slowly. The morning-room of which Rosa had spoken was on the second floor; but the young lady did not go any farther than the first landing-place. The door of the front drawing-room was closed, but the doors of the back drawing-room stood wide open; and peering into the lighted apartment, Rosa saw that it was quite empty. She paused for a moment, looked about her; and then went quietly into the back drawing-room, and closed the door very softly behind her. Francis Tredethlyn followed his wife to the drawing-room because that one frozen syllable, together with the strange expression of her face, had been quite enough to tell him that something was wrong. This husband and this wife had never quarrelled. There had been between them none of those little stormy passages which are apt to interrupt the serenity of the best-regulated households; and the Cornishman’s heart turned cold with the thought that anything like ill-feeling could arise between himself and Maude. The altered expression of her face boded so much; and yet what could arise to displease her, when he was nothing but her devoted slave, ready to obey her commands, willing to lay down his very life for her pleasure? “Maude,” he said, as he closed the drawing-room door, “you speak to me and look at me as if you were offended. And yet I have no consciousness of having done anything to displease you.” Mrs. Tredethlyn looked at her husband with supreme contempt; not the cool scorn which is akin to indifference, but rather a passionate disdainfulness. Taking into consideration the fact that Maude did not care for her husband, all this feminine rage seemed a sad waste of feeling.