The elderly gentleman surveyed the performance through a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez smilingly. "It isn't very legible, is it? Your signature is not very legible, Sir Jocelyn; it would take an expert to decipher it. Would you mind, Lady Kingstone, witnessing the fact that it is your husband's signature?" "Do I mind? Of course I don't." She laughed as if she appreciated the joke of the suggestion. "There--'Witness, Helena Kingstone,'--I think you will be able to read that." "That certainly is legible enough. You write a good bold hand, Lady Kingstone, the sort of hand I like a woman to write." When the pair had left the room the elderly gentleman said to a younger one who was seated at a table to one side: "That's a sad case, a very sad case indeed. That is quite a charming woman, and not bad-looking; while he--he's the sort of person who, in a better ordered state of society, would be consigned to a lethal chamber at the earliest possible moment. Upon my word, I often wonder what makes a woman marry such a man. Fancy, at this time of day, drunk." The younger man seemed to consider before he spoke. "It struck me that he was something else as well as drunk. He didn't carry himself like an ordinary drunken man. He seemed to be under the influence of some drug. She says that he's been ill; he looks it. I wonder if they've been drugging him to bring him up to concert pitch." The elder man shook his head. He seemed to be weighing the other's words. "It's a sad case, a very sad case, whichever way you look at it. Poor woman! She may have had her own motives when she promised to love, honour, and obey him, but it's a long row she has set herself to plough."