Lady Holme took the key up carefully and put it down on the sofa. She was realising something, realising that her husband was feeling happy. When she had laid down the key she looked up at him and there was an intense scrutiny in her eyes. Suddenly it seemed to her as if she were standing up and looking down on him, as if she were the judge, he the culprit in this matter. The numbness left her mind. She was able to think swiftly again and her hands stopped trembling. That look of exultation in her husband’s eyes had changed everything. “Sit down, I want to speak to you,” she said. She was surprised by the calm sound of her own voice. Lord Holme looked astonished. He shifted the bandage on his hand and stood where he was. “Sit down,” she repeated. “Well!” he said. And he sat down. “I suppose you came up here to turn me out of the house?” she said. “You deserve it,” he muttered. But even now he did not look angry. There was a sort of savage glow on his face. It was evident that the violent physical effort he had just made, and the success of it, had irresistibly swept away his fury for the moment. It might return. Probably it would return. But for the moment it was gone. Lady Holme knew Fritz, and she knew that he was feeling good all over. The fact that he could feel thus in such circumstances set the brute in him before her as it had never been set before--in a glare of light. “And what do you deserve?” she asked. All her terror had gone utterly. She felt mistress of herself. “When I went to thrash Carey he was so drunk I couldn’t touch him. This feller showed fight but he was a baby in my hands. I could do anything I liked with him,” said Lord Holme. “Gad! Talk of boxin’--” He looked at his bandaged hand and laughed again triumphantly. Then, suddenly, a sense of other things than his physical strength seemed to return upon him. His face changed, grew lowering, and he thrust forward his under jaw, opening his mouth to speak. Lady Holme did not give him time. “Yes, I sent Leo Ulford the latch-key,” she said. “You needn’t ask. I sent it, and told him to come to-night. D’you know why?” Lord Holme’s face grew scarlet. “Because you’re a--” She stopped him before he could say the irrevocable word. “Because I mean to have the same liberty as the man I’ve married,” she said. “I asked Leo Ulford here, and I intended you should find him here.” “You didn’t. You thought I wasn’t comin’ home.” “Why should I have thought such a thing?” she said, swiftly, sharply. Her voice had an edge to it. “You meant not to come home, then?” She read his stupidity at a glance, the guilty mind that had blundered, thinking its intention known when it was not known. He began to deny it, but she stopped him. At this moment, and exactly when she ought surely to have been crushed by the weight of Fritz’s fury, she dominated him. Afterwards she wondered at herself, but not now. “You meant not to come home?”