The two couples who had parted company, being anxious to advertise their honourable conduct, executed a quartet-without-music in extenuation of what appeared organized treachery. The soprano and tenor had lost sight of the alto and basso just on the other side of Clocketts Croft, where you came to a stile. They had from sheer good-faith retraced their steps to this stile and sat on it reluctantly, in bewilderment of spirit, praying for the spontaneous reappearance of the wanderers. These latter testified unanimously that they had seen the tenor assist the soprano over this stile, and that then the couple had disappeared to the right through the plantation of young larches, and they had followed them along a path of enormous length with impenetrable arboriculture on either hand, without seeing any more of them, and expected to find them on arriving. The tenor and soprano gave close particulars of their return along this self-same path. All the evidence went to show that a suspension of natural laws had taken place, the simultaneous presence of all four at that stile seeming a mathematical certainty from which escape was impossible. Guilty conscience--so Gwen thought at least--was discernible in every phrase of the composition. This was all very fine for Lieutenant Tatham and Di Accrington, the two young monkeys. But why Aunt Constance and her middle-aged M.P.? If they wanted to, why couldn't they, without any nonsense? That was the truncated inquiry Gwen's mind made. She herself was radiant, dazzling, in the highest spirits. But her mother was silent and pre-occupied, and rather impatient with her more than once during the evening. The Earl was the same, minus the impatience. This was because of two very short colloquies under pressure, between Gwen's departure upstairs and the Countess's overdue appearance at dinner. The first began in the lobby outside Gwen's room, where her mother overtook her on her way to her own. Here it is in full: "Oh--there you are, child! What a silly you were not to come! How's your headache?... I do wish your father would have those stairs altered. It's like the ascent of Mount Parnassus." Buckstone was presenting a burlesque of that name just then, and her ladyship may have had it running in her head. "It wasn't a real headache--only pretence. Come in here, mamma. I've something to say.... No--I haven't rung for Lutwyche yet. _She's_ all right. Come in and shut the door." "Why, girl, what's the matter? Why are you...?" "Why am I what?" "Well--twinkling and--breathing and--and altogether!" Her ladyship's descriptive power is fairly good as far as it goes, but it has its limits. "I don't believe I'm either twinkling or breathing or altogether.... Well, then--I'm whatever you like--all three! Only listen to me, mamma dear, because there's not much time. I'm going to marry Adrian Torrens. There!"