for the day was cold and damp: the comfortable red-seated
chairs were as inviting as ever, and the magazines and newspapers lay
in rows upon the scarlet table-cloth. There were flowers in the vases,
and a piece of music on the open piano. Lady Alice exclaimed in her
pleasure, "How pretty it is! how cosy!" and wondered at the gloom that
sat upon her husband's brow.

The room was cosy and pretty enough--but it was empty.

Caspar looked round mutely, then glanced at his companions. Miss Brooke
paused in the act of taking off one woollen glove, and opened her mouth
and forgot to shut it again. Maurice stood frowning, twitching his brows
and biting his lips in the effort to subdue a torrent of rage that was
surging up in his heart. He would have sworn, he said afterwards, if
Lady Alice had not been there--he did not mind Doctor Sophy so much. All
that he did now, however, was to mutter "Ungrateful rascals," and make
as if he would turn to flee.

But he was stopped by Caspar's clutch at his arm. Maurice saw that his
purpose--that of haranguing the men outside--had been divined and
arrested. He turned to his friend and saw for the first time on Caspar's
face that the shaft had gone home. He had shown scarcely any sign of
suffering before.

"I don't deserve this from them," said Brooke quietly, and Maurice could
tell that he had gone rather white about the lips. Then in a still lower
voice, "Don't let her know. You were right, Maurice; I had better not
have come."

"I'll just go and look outside: I won't speak to them, don't be
afraid--you talk to Lady Alice," said Maurice breaking from him. But
when he got into the dark little entry, he did not look outside for
anything or anybody: he only relieved himself by exclaiming. "Oh, d--n
the fools!" and shaking his first in a very reprehensible way at some
imaginary crowd of auditors. For Maurice was half an Irishman, and his
blood was up, and on his friend's behalf he was, as he would just then
have expressed it, "in a devil of a rage." While he was executing a sort
of mad war-dance on the jute mat in the passage, relieving his mind by
some wild gesticulation and still wilder objurgation of the world, Mr.
Brooke had turned back to his wife with a pleasant word and smile.

"I must show you the photographs," he said. "We are very proud of them.
There will be plenty of time, for the members seem to be a little late
in getting together to-day. Possibly they thought I was not comin