But by the time he had sent for the carriage the answer had suggested itself. No doubt Harding Watton had given Letty news of that hansom in Pall Mall, and no doubt, also--He shrugged his shoulders in annoyance. The notion of having to explain and excuse himself was particularly unpalatable. What a fool he had been not to tell Letty of his East End adventure on their way to Queen's Gate. He was standing in a little crowd at the foot of the stairs when Letty swept past him in search of her wraps. He smiled at her, but she held her head erect as though she did not see him. So there was to be a scene. George felt the rise of a certain inner excitement. Perhaps it was as well. There were a good many things he wanted to say. At the same time, the Cathedine episode had filled him with a new disgust for the violences and brutalities to which the very intimacy of the marriage relation may lead. If a scene there was to be, he meant to be more or less frank, and at the same time to keep both himself and her within bounds. * * * * * "You can't deny that you made a secret of it from me," cried Letty, angrily. "I asked you what had been doing in the House, and you never let me suspect that you had been anywhere else the whole evening." "I daresay," said George, quietly. "But I never meant to make any mystery. Something you said about Lady Maxwell put me off telling you--then. I thought I would wait till we got home." They were in George's study--the usual back-room on the ground-floor, which George could not find time to make comfortable, while Letty had never turned her attention to it. Tressady was leaning against the mantelpiece. He had turned up a solitary electric light, and in the cold glare of it Letty was sitting opposite to him, angrily upright. The ugly light had effaced the half-tones of the face and deepened the lines of it, while it had taken all the grace from her extravagant dress and tumbled flowers. She seemed to have lost her prettiness. "Something I said about Lady Maxwell?" she repeated scornfully. "Why shouldn't I say what I like about Lady Maxwell? What does she matter either to you or to me that I should not laugh at her if I please? Everybody laughs at her." "I don't think so," said Tressady, quietly. "I have seen her to-night in a curious and touching scene--in a meeting of very poor people. She tried to make a speech, by the way, and spoke badly. She did not carry the meeting with her, and towards the end it got noisy. As we came out she was struck with a stone, and I got a hansom for her, and drove her home to St. James's Square. We were just turning into the Square when Harding saw us. I happened to be with her in the crowd when the stone hit her. What do you suppose I could do but bring her home?" "Why did you go? and why didn't you tell me at once?"