The little group of friends drew closer together. “Don’t you see what it means?” broke out Claire in a low voice of intense anger. “It’s been all a trick--a trick! He never meant to go to London at all. He only _pretended_ to me that he was going, so that I should think that I was free and he could trap me.” She looked at Nick and Jean significantly. “He must have overheard us--that day in the shrubbery at Charnwood--you remember?” They both nodded. “And then planned to humiliate me in front of half the county.” “But you won’t go back with him?” exclaimed Nick hotly. He swung round and addressed the chauffeur stormily. “You can damn well tell your master that her ladyship will return this evening with the rest of the party.” The man’s face twitched. As far as it is possible for a well-drilled servant’s face to express the human emotion of compassion, his did so. “It would be no good, sir,” he said in a low voice. “He means her ladyship to come. ‘Go and fetch her away, Langton,’ was his actual words to me. I didn’t want the job, sir, as you may guess.” “Well, she’s not coming, that’s all,” declared Nick determinedly. “Oh, I must, Nick--I must go,” cried Claire in distress. “I--I _daren’t_ stay.” Lady Anne nodded. “Yes, I think she must go, Nick dear,” she said persuasively. “It would he---wiser.” “But it’s damnable!” ejaculated Nick furiously. “It’s only done to insult her--to humiliate her!” Claire smiled a little wistfully. * “I ought to be used to that by now,” she said a trifle shakily. “ut Lady Anne is right--I must go.” She turned to the chauffeur, dismissing him with a little air of dignity that, in the circumstances, was not without its flavour of heroism. “You can go on ahead, Langton, and tell Sir Adrian that I am coming.” The man touched his hat and moved off obediently. “Nick and I will walk down to the car with you,” said Lady Anne. She was fully alive to the fact that her escort might contribute towards ameliorating the kind of reception Claire would obtain from her husband. “Jean dear, look after everybody for me for a few minutes, will you? And,” raising her voice a little, “explain that Claire has been called home suddenly, as Sir Adrian was not well enough to make the journey to town, after all.” But Lady Anne’s well-meant endeavour to throw dust in the eyes of the rest of the party was of comparatively little use. Although to many of them Claire was personally an entire stranger--since Sir Adrian intervened whenever possible to prevent her from forming new friendships--the story of her unhappy married life was practically public property in the neighbourhood, and it was quite evident that to all intents and purposes the detestable husband had actually insisted on her returning with him, exactly as a naughty child might be swept off home by an irate parent in the middle of a jolly party.