"Go to bed!" he said brutally.

"What have you done?"

"That's my business. Go to bed. D'you hear?"

She hesitated. Then she said:

"How dare you speak to me like that? Have you seen Mr. Carey?"

Lord Holme suddenly took his wife by the shoulders; pushed her out of the room, shut the door, and locked it.

They always slept in the same bedroom. Was he not going to bed at all?

What had happened? Lady Holme could not tell from his face or manner anything of what had occurred. She looked at her clock and saw her husband had been out of the house for two hours. Indignation and curiosity fought within her; and she became conscious of an excitement such as she had never felt before. Sleep was impossible, but she got into bed and lay there listening to the noises made by her husband in his dressing-room. She could just hear them faintly through the door.

Presently they ceased. A profound silence reigned. There was a sofa in the dressing-room. Could he be trying to sleep on it? Such a thing seemed incredible to her. For Lord Holme, although he could rough it when he was shooting or hunting, at home or abroad, and cared little for inconvenience when there was anything to kill, was devoted to comfort in ordinary life, and extremely exigent in his own houses. For nothing, for nobody, had Lady Holme ever known him to allow himself to be put out.

She strained her ears as she lay in bed. For a long time the silence lasted. She began to think her husband must have left the dressing-room, when she heard a noise as if something--some piece of furniture--had been kicked, and then a stentorian "Damn!"

Suddenly she burst out laughing. She shook against the pillows. She laughed and laughed weakly; helplessly, till the tears ran down her cheeks. And with those tears ran away her anger, the hot, strained sensation that had been within her even since the scene at Arkell House.

If she had womanly pride it melted ignominiously. If she had feminine dignity--that pure and sacred panoply which man ignores at his own proper peril--it disappeared. The "poor old Fritz" feeling, which was the most human, simple, happy thing in her heart, started into vivacity as she realised the long legs flowing into air over the edge of the short sofa, the pent-up fury--fury of the too large body on the too small resting-place--which found a partial vent in the hallowed objurgation of the British Philistine.

With every moment that she lay in the big bed she was punishing Fritz. She nestled down among the pillows. She stretched out her limbs luxuriously. How easy it was to punish a man! Lying there she recalled her husband's words, each detail of his treatment of her since she had spoken to Carey. He had called her "a damned shameful woman." That was of all the worst offence. She told herself that she ought to, that she must, for that expression alone, hate Fritz for ever. And then, immediately, she knew that she had forgiven it already, without effort, without thought.

She understood the type with which she had to deal, the absurd boyishness that was linked with the brutality of it, the lack of mind to give words their true, their inmost meaning. Words are instruments of torture, or the pattering confetti of a carnival, not by themselves but by the mind that sends them forth. Fritz's exclamation might have roused eternal enmity in her if it had been uttered by another man. Coming from Fritz it won its pardon easily by having a brother, "Damn."

She wondered how long her husband would be ruled by his sense of outrage.

Towards seven she heard another movement; another indignant exclamation, then the creak of furniture, a step, a rattling at the door. She turned on her side towards the wall, shut her eyes and breathed lightly and regularly. The key revolved, the door opened and closed, and she heard feet shuffling cautiously over the carpet. A moment and Fritz was in bed. Another moment, a long sigh, and he was asleep.

Lady Holme still lay awake. Now that her attention was no longer fixed upon her husband's immediate proceedings she began to wonder again what had happened between him and Rupert Carey. She would find out in the morning.

And presently she too slept.

CHAPTER IX

IN the morning Lord Holme woke very late and in a different humour. Lady Holme was already up, sitting by a little table and pouring out tea, when he stretched himself, yawned, turned over, uttered two or three booming, incohorent exclamations, and finally raised himself on one arm, exhibiting a touzled head and a pair of blinking eyes, stared solemnly at his wife's white figure and at the tea-table, and ejaculated:

"Eh?"

"Tea?" she returned, lifting up the silver teapot and holding it towards him with an encouraging, half-playful gesture.

Lord Holme yawned again, put up his hands to his hair, and then looked steadily at the teapot, which his wife was moving about in the sunbeams that were shining in at the window. The morning was fine.

"Tea, Fritz?"

He smiled and began to roll out of bed. But the action woke up his memory, and when he was on his feet he looked at his wife again more doubtfully. She saw that he was beginning, sleepily but definitely, to consider whether he should go on being absolutely furious about the events of the preceding night, and acted with promptitude.

"Don't be frightened," she said quickly. "I've made up my mind to forgive you. You're only a great schoolboy after all. Come along."

She began to pour out the tea. It made a pleasant little noise falling into the cup. The sun was wonderfully bright in the pretty room, almost Italian in its golden warmth. Lady Holme's black Pomeranian, Pixie, stood on its hind legs to greet him. He came up to the sofa, still looking undecided, but with a wavering light of dawning satisfaction in his eyes.

"You behaved damned badly last night," he growled.

He sat down beside his wife with a bump. She put up her hand to his rough, brown cheek.

"We both behaved atrociously," she answered. "There's your tea."

She poured in the cream and buttered a thin piece of toast. Lord Holme sipped. As he put the cup down she held the piece of toast up to his mouth. He took a bite.

"And we both do the Christian act and forgive each other," she added.

He leaned back. Sleep was flowing away from him, full consciousness of life and events returning to him.

"What made you speak to that feller?" he said.

"Drink your tea. I don't know. He looked miserable at being avoided, and--"

"Miserable! He was drunk. He's done for himself in London, and pretty near done for you too."

As he thought about it all a cloud began to settle over his face. Lady Holme saw it and said:

"That depends on you, Fritz."

She nestled against him, put her hand over his, and kept on lifting his hand softly and then letting it fall on his knee, as she went on:

"That all depends on you."

"How?"

He began to look at her hand and his, following their movements almost like a child.

"If we are all right together, obviously all right, very, very par-ti-cu-lar-ly all right--voyez vous, mon petit chou?--they will think nothing of it. 'Poor Mr. Carey! What a pity the Duke's champagne is so good!' That's what they'll say. But if we--you and I--are not on perfect terms, if you behave like a bear that's been sitting on a wasps'

nest--why then they'll say--they'll say--"

"What'll they say?"

"They'll say, 'That was really a most painful scene at the Duke's. She's evidently been behaving quite abominably. Those yellow women always bring about all the tragedies--'"

"Yellow women!" Lord Holme ejaculated.

He looked hard at his wife. It was evident that his mind was tacking.

"Miss Schley heard what you said to the feller," he added.

"People who never speak hear everything--naturally."

"How d'you mean--never speak? Why, she's full of talk."