She unlocked the door of her room and went out upon the landing and looked down over the banisters. Mortimer was dining! “Though empires crumble,” she murmured to herself. She heard the clatter of knives and forks; through the long well-like slip between the banisters she could see the parlour-maid carrying dishes. Mortimer was dining well, and intending to divorce his wife! She was too frightened to properly enjoy the antithesis. She went back into her own room and lay down upon the bed, shaking in every limb. She had eaten hardly anything that day. She must have dozed a little. She woke with a start, to see a broad shaft of light coming in from the doorway, and her husband, a stout undignified sort of avenging angel, standing on the threshold. She sprang into a sitting posture. “Make some light!” he said impatiently. “Why bother?” she said languidly. “You can see to scold me quite well enough in the dark!” “Scold!” he said, in an accent of contemptuous reproach, coming nearer. He was flushed, but quite sober. She wondered if he really had had the heart to dine. He enlightened her. “You don’t seem to realize,” he said, “the position of affairs. I have been quite unable to eat any dinner.” “What about me? But, however, that is neither here nor there. The point is”--assuming as viragoish an air as she could--“will you please tell me what you can have meant by allowing Aunt Poynder to come up here as your emissary and abuse me, your wife, and say awful things out loud for all the house to hear?” “You are begging the question, Phœbe,” her husband said, and in his earnestness and sincerity he was almost dignified. “You must know how serious all this is! What have you to say in explanation of the charges which Aunt Poynder brings against you, and that woman’s letter to me which I showed you?” “What are the charges?” she asked valiantly and without the flippancy with which she had thought fit to characterize all her previous remarks. “Wait!” he said, and she gave a little frightened cry, and clutched his arm. “What are you going to do, Mortimer?” “I am going to look at your face while you sit there and lie to me!” he said, striking a match, and lighting the gas. It showed her countenance frightened and pale, his reddish and set. Even in her agitation she was struck by the expression he had used. It was the second time she had been taxed with the mendacious habit. She began to think there was something in it. It was, however, the first time Mortimer had permitted himself to allude to it so roundly. She was nonplussed by his attitude; she had expected him to bluster and be ridiculous. He was dignified even to a tragedy. The thought crossed her mind that he still loved her, which would make it difficult for him to adopt the point of view she was intending to put before him.