Jenny did not always resent his rudeness. But she never compromised her right to resent it. She exercised the right now, rising with instantaneous dignity. "It's time for us to go, Chat. Mr. Austin, will you kindly look after Mr. Octon's comfort for the rest of the evening?" She swept out, Chat pattering after her in a hen-like flutter. Octon drank off his glass of wine with a muttered oath. Excellent as the port was, it seemed to do him no good. He leaned over to me--perfectly sober, be it understood (I never saw him affected by liquor), but desperately savage. "I won't stand that," he said. "If she sticks to that, I'll never come back to this house when I've walked out of it to-night." I was learning how to deal with his tempests. "I shall hope to have the pleasure of encountering you elsewhere," I observed politely. "Meanwhile I have my orders. Pray help yourself to port." He did that, but at the same moment hurled at me the order--"Take her that message." "There's pen and ink behind you, Octon." Temper is a terrible master--and needs looking after even as a servant. He jumped up, wrote something--what I could only guess--and rang the bell violently. I could imagine Jenny's smile--I did not ring like that. "Take that to your mistress," he commanded. "It's the address she wanted." But he had carefully closed the envelope, and probably Loft had his private opinion. We sat in silence till the answer came. "Miss Driver says she is much obliged, sir, for the address," said Loft as, with a wave of his hand, he introduced a footman with coffee, "and she needn't trouble you any more in the matter--as you have another engagement to-night." Under Loft's eyes he had pulled himself together; he received the message with an appearance of indifference which quite supported the idea that it related to some trifle and that he really had to go away early; I had not given him credit for such a power of suddenly regaining self-control. He nodded, and said lightly to me, "Well, since Miss Driver is so kind, I'll be off in another ten minutes." The presence of servants must, in the long run, create a great deal of good manners. When Loft was out of the room Octon dropped his disguise. He brought his big hand down on the table with a slap, saying, "There's an end of it!" "Why shouldn't she build an Institute? If you take a lease for only seven years, how are you aggrieved by getting notice to quit at the end of the term?" "Don't argue round the fringe of things. Don't be a humbug," he admonished me, scornfully enough, yet for once, as I fancied, with a touch of gentleness and liking. "You've damned sharp eyes, and I've something else to do than take the trouble to blind them." "No extraordinary acuteness of vision is necessary," I ventured to remark.