He saw; and with concern she saw him set down the glass he was raising to his lips and saw his face darken. He said: "Damnation! It's Lady Ashington. It's maddening, this kind of thing. By God, it is. I'm going. She'll spot me in a minute. I'm going." His violent words hurt her and frightened her. He got to his feet and she made to rise also. That worsened the incident. "Stop where you are," he said angrily. "Both of us getting up--making people look! I can slip out behind here. Damn this business!" When she followed him to their room, she found his temper no better that he had gone without his dinner. He had made arrangements, he told her, for them to leave early in the morning, and he named their destination. She tried to pretend not to notice his mood; but her voice trembled a little as she said, "I've never heard of the place, dear." He grunted, a little ashamed of himself: "I don't suppose anybody has. I hope not. We must get off the beaten track. Badgered about like this from pillar to post. It's getting on my nerves." She faltered, "I'm so sorry, Roly." Her tone pricked him. But these men hate above all things to feel in the wrong when they are in the wrong. The effect of her humility was to make him explain: "I don't know what possessed you, Audrey, 'pon my soul I don't, to go palling up with that woman." Again she blundered. His reproach was so absurd that she laughed quite naturally at it: "O Roly! how ridiculous! How was I to know you knew her?" He turned on her, alarming her utterly. "You ought to have known!" Foolish, exasperating tears in her eyes: "How could I? How could I?" "I've told you--I've warned you; that's what I mean. I've told you that every dashed soul I ever knew seems to be all over the Continent. I've warned you to be careful. Asked you not to get in with people. You absolutely don't care, seems to me. Perhaps you think it funny dodging about like this--perhaps you enjoy it. Well, I don't. That's enough. Let's drop the subject." IV So and in this wise the miserable business jolted towards its climax; deeper blunders at every step and every blunder additional to the load that stumbled them into the next. Here was a young man that had taken to himself pleasures, and lo! they were chains, rattling whensoever he moved most grimly to remind him that now limits were imposed upon his movements; that he who, by virtue of his rank, of the blood in his veins, of his own high, careless, fearless air, that he who by virtue of these was wont to look every man in the face more boldly than the most of us, must now hide, dodge, shift, dissemble, or betray the secret that, as to his torment he found, every day and every covering deception made more impossible to discover to the world.