"You would have been very dear to take to Gretna Green," he continued. "I should have loved to watch your wise, sweet eyes changing all expressions as morning dawned and you found yourself away from them all--away from Augustus." I did not answer. I drew hieroglyphics with the point of the mauve parasol in the soft moss beneath our feet. "Why don't you speak, Comtesse?" "There is nothing to say--I am married--and you did not tap at the window--and let us go back to the house." IV The last evening at Harley is one of the things I shall not want to recall. Augustus got drunk--yes, it is almost too dreadful to write even. I had not realized up to this that gentlemen (of course I do not mean that word literally, as applied to Augustus, but I mean people with money and a respectable position)--I never realized that they got drunk. I thought it was only common men in the street. It struck me he was making a great noise at dinner, but as he was sitting on the same side of the table as I was I could not see. When the men joined us afterwards it came upon me as a thunder-clap. His face was a deep heliotrope, and he walked unsteadily--not really lurching about, but rather as if the furniture was in the way. One or two of the men seemed very much amused, especially when he went and pushed himself into the sofa where Lady Grenellen was sitting and threw his arm along the back behind her head. I felt frozen. I could not have risen from my chair for a few moments. She, however, did not seem to mind at all; she merely laughed continuously behind her fan, the men helping her to ridicule Augustus. For me it was an hour of deep humiliation. It required all my self-control to go on talking to Babykins as if nothing had happened. The Duke came over and joined us. He drew a low chair and sat down so that I could not see the hilarious sofa-party. I have not the least idea what he said or what any of us said. The guffaws of laughter in Augustus's thick voice was all I was conscious of. Sir Antony Thornhirst, who had stopped to speak to Lady Tilchester by the billiard-room door, now came over to us. He stood by me for a moment, then crossed to Lady Grenellen. "They are wanting you to play bridge in the blue drawing-room," he said. She rose quite reluctantly, still overcome with mirth. Augustus tried to get up, too, but stumbled back into the sofa. Then, with infinite tact, my kinsman attracted his attention, said some thrilling thing about the war, and, as Lady Grenellen moved off and Augustus made another ineffectual attempt to rise and follow her, Sir Antony sat down in her vacant place and for half an hour conversed with my husband. Oh, I force myself to write the words "my husband." It is to keep the hideous fact in remembrance, otherwise I might let myself express aloud the loathing and contempt I feel for him.