e had unwittingly
trapped Lady Hermione into a marriage on grounds that were inadequate
and false.

"Good God!" he muttered, and, for the moment, it was impossible for his
hearers to resist the dreadful inference that, in some shape or form,
he was implicated in the outrage which bulked so large in their minds.
Mrs. Curtis wanted to scream aloud, but she dared not. Even Devar was
staggered by his friend's unaccountable attitude. The only outwardly
unmoved individual present was Horace P. Curtis. He turned and pressed
an electric bell; Steingall glared at him, so he explained his action.

"I feel like a highball," he said blandly. "I guess Mrs. Curtis could
do with one also. In fact, five highballs would be a bully good
notion."

CHAPTER VII

TEN O'CLOCK

Curtis had seized the opportunity while Hermione was in her room before
dinner to rub the blood-stained sleeve of the overcoat with a wet
cloth. He had not, of course, been able to eradicate the ghastly dye
wholly from the thick material, but the garment was now wearable, at
any rate by night, and he had little fear of attracting attention as he
crossed the brilliantly lighted foyer of the hotel.

Passing out by the Fifth Avenue exit, he began the second cigar of the
evening, and stood in the porch for a moment to collect his faculties.
The time was five minutes of ten, and he had been married about an hour
and a half. He had just finished his second dinner, and for the
guerdon of companionship with the charming and gracious girl whom fate
had figuratively thrown into his arms he would cheerfully have tackled
a third meal without any personal qualms as to subsequent indigestion.

But, joking apart, he was married. That was the overwhelming feature
of life, a feature which dwarfed every other circumstance much as
grimly gigantic Windsor Castle dominates the puny town beneath its
walls. The mere tying of the matrimonial knot had not troubled him.
He was heart whole and fancy free then--or, not to strain the metaphor,
he could have boasted those attributes a little earlier in the
evening--and he recked nothing of the really serious legal disabilities
incurred by the adventure. But, like every other young man, his
thoughts had turned sometimes to a young woman--not any special young
woman, but that nebulous entity which is necessarily bound up with the
notion that some day, somewhere, somehow, a man will encounter the maid
in whose limpid eyes lurks