No one sat down to dinner that night, except Kathleen, and Gwen, and Bob Russell. Mrs Blake was too ill, and Lawrence did not come back. Doreen and her barrister were still away. Kathleen was in a state of pent-up fury, which now and then burst its bounds in passionate indictment against her brother. “Why can’t he stay away,” she said, “if he can’t behave like a gentleman? I’m sure we don’t want him here, he is always a wet blanket, and upsets mother about something or other every day. It has been the same ever since he went to college. He doesn’t care for anything in heaven or earth except himself; I’m sick of it. If he doesn’t go away and stay away, I’ll just take mother to live somewhere else altogether.” Gwen was much too fond of Lawrence and much too staunch to her friends not to speak a word for him in spite of her own inward anger. “There is a reason for it, Kit,” she said. “Don’t judge him to-day. He’ll be all right again presently.” “Until the next time,” with an angry sneer, very like her brother’s. “I tell you it isn’t good enough, Owen. He’s not going to behave like this to mother again, I’ll get between them if he kills me for it. What has he ever been to her but a curse?—drinking, and gambling, and idling about the world. Oh, I dare say he’s charming enough to you always! we all know there isn’t a man could be more fascinating when he likes, but how much does that go for beside scenes like this?” Gwen set her teeth. “You are not fair,” she said. “Lawrence has behaved like a brute to-day, and I dare say it isn’t the first time, but he has neither gambled nor drunk for years, and there have been times when he was goodness itself to his mother.” “And few and far enough between too,” sneered Kathleen. “I’m only thankful that he hasn’t got engaged to any friend of mine; for if I cared for her very much, I’d sooner see her in her grave than married to Lawrence.” “Nonsense!” exclaimed Gwen sharply, and then stopped short, suddenly remembering she was a guest, and the dinner finished in a constrained silence. “Bob and I will go on to Dublin to-morrow,” she told Kathleen later, “and don’t bother about us this evening. We will look after each other, and you stay with Mrs Blake.” When Doreen and her _fiancé_ returned, she made up some sort of a tale to them, and then persuaded every one to go to bed early, that Lawrence, if he returned, might come in and go to his room unnoticed. She did not go to bed herself, however, but sat up with her door open, waiting for him. At two o’clock in the morning she heard his latchkey in the front door, and went down bravely to meet him. When Lawrence saw her he glared at her angrily, but she took no notice, though inwardly shocked at the unspeakable change on his face since the morning. He was deathly white, with an almost tigerish expression, and she knew he had been drinking. “I couldn’t rest until I knew you had come in,” she said, trying to speak naturally.