He was glad indeed when his task was over. On their way to the drawing-rooms they passed a broad landing, which on one side led out to a balcony, and had been made into a decorated bower for sitting-out. At the farther end he saw Letty sitting beside Harding Watton. Letty was looking straight before her, with a flushed and rather frowning face. Harding was talking to her, and, to judge from his laughing manner, was amusing himself, if not her. George duly found Lady Cathedine a seat, and returned himself to ask Letty whether it was not time to go. He found, however, that she had been carried off by another partner, and could only resign himself to a fresh twenty minutes of boredom. He leant, yawning, against the wall, feeling the evening interminable. Then a Harrow and Oxford acquaintance came up to him, and they chatted for a time behind a stand of flowers that stood between them and one of the doorways to the ballroom. At the end of the dance George saw Lady Cathedine hurrying up to this door with the quick, furtive step that was characteristic of her. She passed on the other side of the flowers, and George heard her say to someone just inside the room: "Robert, the carriage has come!" A pause; then a thick voice said, in an emphatic undertone: "Damn the carriage!--go away!" "But, Robert, you know we _promised_ to look in at Lady Tuam's on the way home." The thick voice dropped a note lower. "Damn Lady Tuam! I shall come when it suits me." Lady Cathedine fell back, and George saw her cross the landing, and drop into a chair beside an old general, who was snoozing in a peaceful corner till his daughters should see fit to take him home. The old general took no notice of her, and she sat there, playing with her fan, her rather prominent grey eyes staring out of her white face. Both George and his friend, as it happened, had heard the conversation. The friend raised his eyebrows in disgust. "What a brute that fellow is! They have been married four months. However, she was amply warned." "Who was she?" "The daughter of old Wickens, the banker. He married her for her money, and lives upon it religiously. By now, I should think, he has dragged her through every torture that marriage admits of." "So soon?" said George, drily. "Well," said the friend, laughing, "no doubt it admits of a great many." "I am ready to go home," said a voice at Tressady's elbow. Something in the intonation surprised him, and he turned quickly. "By all means," he said, throwing an astonished look at his wife, who had come up to him on Lord Cathedine's arm. "I will go and look for the carriage." What was the matter, he asked himself as he ran downstairs--what was the meaning of Letty's manner and expression?