As it glided away into the night she heard her husband's loud breathing.

He did not speak for two or three minutes, but breathed like a man who had been running, and moved violently in the carriage as if to keep still were intolerable to him. The window next to him was up. He let it down. Then he turned right round to his wife, who was leaning back in her corner wrapped up in her black cloak.

"With the Duke sittin' there!" he said in a loud voice. "With the Duke sittin' there!"

There was a sound of outrage in the voice.

"Didn't I kick that sweep out of the house?" he added. "Didn't I?"

"I believe you asked Mr. Carey not to call anymore."

Lady Holme's voice had no excitement in it.

"Asked him! I--"

"Don't make such a noise, Fritz. The men will hear you."

"I told him if he ever came again I'd have him put out."

"Well, he never has come again."

"What d'you mean by speakin' to him? What d'you mean by it?"

Lady Holme knew that her husband was a thoroughly conventional man, and, like all conventional men, had a horror of a public scene in which any woman belonging to him was mixed up. Such a scene alone was quite enough to rouse his wrath. But there was in his present anger something deeper, more brutal, than any rage caused by a breach of the conventions. His jealousy was stirred.

"He didn't speak to you. You spoke to him."

Lady Holme did not deny it.

"I heard every word you said," continued Lord Holme, beginning to breathe hard again. "I--I--"

Lady Holme felt that he was longing to strike her, that if he had been the same man, but a collier or a labourer, born in another class of life, he would not have hesitated to beat her. The tradition in which he had been brought up controlled him. But she knew that if he could have beaten her he would have hated her less, that his sense of bitter wrong would have at once diminished. In self-control it grew. The spark rose to a flame.

"You're a damned shameful woman!" he said.

The brougham drew up softly before their house. Lord Holme, who was seated on the side next the house, got out first. He did not wait on the pavement to assist his wife, but walked up the steps, opened the door, and went into the hall. Lady Holme followed. She saw her husband, with the light behind him, standing with his hand on the handle of the hall door. For an instant she thought that he was going to shut her out. He actually pushed the door till the light was almost hidden. Then he flung it open with a bang, threw down his hat and strode upstairs.

If he had shut her out! She found herself wondering what would have become of her, where she would have gone. She would have had to go to the Coburg, or to Claridge's, without a maid, without luggage. As she slowly came upstairs she heard her husband go into the drawing-room. Was he waiting for her there? or did he wish to avoid her? When she reached the broad landing she hesitated. She was half inclined to go in audaciously, to laugh in his face; turn his fury into ridicule, tell him she was the sort of woman who is born to do as she likes, to live as she chooses, to think of nothing but her own will, consult nothing but her whims of the moment. But she went on and into her bedroom.

Josephine was there and began to take the diamonds out of her hair. Lady Holme did not say a word. She was listening intently for the sound of any movement below. She heard nothing. When she was undressed, and there was nothing more for the maid to do, she began to feel uneasy, as if she would rather not dismiss the girl. But it was very late. Josephine strangled her yawns with difficulty. There was no excuse for keeping her up any longer.

"You can go."

The maid went out, leaving Lady Holme standing in the middle of the big bedroom. Next to it on one side was Lord Holme's dressing-room. On the other side there was a door leading into Lady Holme's boudoir. Almost directly after Josephine had gone Lady Holme heard the outer door of this room opened, and the heavy step of her husband. It moved about the room, stopped, moved about again. What could he be doing? She stood where she was, listening. Suddenly the door between the rooms was thrown open and Lord Holme appeared.

"Where's the red book?" he said.

"The red book!"

"Where is it? D'you hear?"

"What do you want it for?"

"That sweep's address."

"What are you going to do? Write to him?"

"Write to him!" said Lord Holme, with bitter contempt. "I'm goin' to thrash him. Where is it?"

"You are going now?"

"I've not come up to answer questions. I've come for the red book. Where is it?"

"The little drawer at the top on the right hand of the writing-table."

Lord Holme turned back into the boudoir, went to the writing-table, found the book, opened it, found the address and wrote it down on a bit of paper. He folded the paper up anyhow and thrust it into his waistcoat pocket. Then, without saying another word to his wife, or looking at her, he went out and down the staircase.

She followed him on to the landing, and stood there till she heard the hall door shut with a bang.

A clock below struck four. She went back into the bedroom and sank into an armchair.

A slight sense of confusion floated over her mind for a moment, like a cloud. She was not accustomed to scenes. There had been one certainly when Rupert Carey was forbidden to come to the house any more, but it had been brief, and she had not been present at it. She had only heard of it afterwards. Lord Holme had been angry then, and she had rather liked his anger. She took it as, in some degree, a measure of his attachment to her. And then she had had no feeling of being in the wrong or of humiliation. She had been charming to Carey, as she was charming to all men. He had lost his head. He had mistaken the relations existing between her and her husband, and imagined that such a woman as she was must be unhappily mated with such a man as Lord Holme. The passionate desire to console a perfectly-contented woman had caused him to go too far, and bring down upon himself a fiat of exile, which he could not defy since Lady Holme permitted it to go forth, and evidently was not rendered miserable by it. So the acquaintance with Rupert Carey had ceased, and life had slipped along once more on wheels covered with india-rubber tyres.

And now she had renewed the acquaintance publicly and with disastrous results.

As she sat there she began to wonder at herself, at the strength of her temper, the secret violence of her nature. She had yielded like a child to a sudden impulse. She had not thought of consequences. She had ignored her worldly knowledge. She had considered nothing, but had acted abruptly, as any ignorant, uneducated woman might have acted. She had been the slave of a mood. Or had she been the slave of another woman--of a woman whom she despised?

Miss Schley had certainly been the cause of the whole affair. Lady Holme had spoken to Rupert Carey merely because she knew that her husband was immediately behind her with the American. There had been within her at that moment something of a broad, comprehensive feeling, mingled with the more limited personal feeling of anger against another woman's successful impertinence, a sentiment of revolt in which womanhood seemed to rise up against the selfish tyrannies of men. As she had walked in the crowd, and heard for an instant Miss Schley's drawlling voice speaking to her husband, she had felt as if the forbidding of the acquaintance between herself and Rupert Carey had been an act of tyranny, as if the acquaintance between Miss Schley and her husband were a worse act of tyranny. The feeling was wholly unreasonable, of course.

How could Lord Holme know that she wished to impose a veto, even as he had? And what reason was there for such a veto? That lay deep down within her as woman's instinct. No man could have understood it.

And now Lord Holme had gone out in the dead of the night to thrash Carey.

She began to think about Carey.

How disgusting he had been. A drunken man must be one of two things--either terrible or absurd. Carey had been absurd--disgusting and absurd. It had been better for him if he had been terrible. But mumblings and tears! She remembered what she had said of Carey to Robin Pierce--that something in his eyes, one of those expressions which are the children of the eyes, or of the lines about the eyes, told her that he was capable of doing something great. What an irony that her remark to Robin had been succeeded by such a scene! And she heard again the ugly sound of Carey's incoherent exclamations, and felt again the limp clasp of his hot, weak hand, and saw again the tears running over his flushed, damp face. It was all very nauseous. And yet--had she been wrong in what she had said of him? Did she even think that she had been wrong now, after what had passed?

What kind of great action had she thought he would be capable of if a chance to do something great were thrown in his way? She said to herself that she had spoken at random, as one perpetually speaks in Society. And then she remembered Carey's eyes. They were ugly eyes. She had always thought them ugly. Yet, now and then, there was something in them, something to hold a woman--no, perhaps not that--but something to startle a woman, to make her think, wonder, even to make her trust. And the scene which had just occurred, with all its weakness, its fatuity, its maundering display of degradation and the inability of any self-government, had not somehow destroyed the impression made upon Lady Holme by that something in Carey's eyes. What she had said to Robin Pierce she might not choose ever to say again. She would not choose ever to say it again--of that she was certain--but she had not ceased to think it.

A conviction based upon no evidence that could be brought forward to convince anyone is the last thing that can be destroyed in a woman's heart.

It was nearly six o'clock when Lady Holme heard a step coming up the stairs. She was still sitting in the deep chair, and had scarcely moved.

The step startled her. She put her hands on the arms of the chair and leaned forward. The step passed her bedroom. She heard the door of the dressing-room opened and then someone moving about.

"Fritz!" she called. "Fritz!"

There was no answer. She got up and went quickly to the dressing-room.

Her husband was there in his shirt sleeves. His evening coat and waistcoat were lying half on a chair, half on the floor, and he was in the act of unfastening his collar. She looked into his face, trying to read it.

"Well?" she said. "Well?"