there was between them. Of that she was aware. But
when it came to being brutally assaulted by Jaffery Chayne, she really
thought Barbara would sympathise. Wherefore Barbara, rather angry at
being brought up to London on a needless errand, involving loss of
dinner and upset of household arrangements, administered a
sleeping-draught and bade her wake in the morning in a less idiotic
frame of mind.

"Perhaps I behaved like a cat," Barbara said to me later--to "behave
like a cat" is her way of signifying a display of the vilest phases of
feminine nature--"but I couldn't help it. She didn't talk a great deal
of sense. It isn't as if I had never warned her about the way she has
been treating Jaffery. I have, heaps of times. And as for Adrian--I'm
sick of his name--and if I am, what must poor old Jaff be?"

This she said during a private discussion that night on the whole
situation. I say the whole situation, because, when she returned to
Northlands, she found there a haggard ogre who for the first time in his
life had eaten a canary's share of an excellent dinner, imploring me to
tell him whether he should enlist for a soldier, or commit suicide, or
lie prone on Doria's doormat until it should please her to come out and
trample on him. He seemed rather surprised--indeed a trifle hurt--that
neither of us called him a Satyr. How could we take his part and not
Doria's--especially now that Barbara had come from the bedside of the
scandalously entreated lady? He boomed and bellowed about the
drawing-room, recapitulating the whole story.

"But, my good friend," I remonstrated, "by the showing of both of you,
she taunted you and insulted you all ends up. You--'a barren
rascal'--you? Good God!"

He flung out a deprecatory hand. What did it matter? We must take this
from her point of view. He oughtn't to have laid hands on her. He
oughtn't to have spoken to her at all. She was right. He was a savage
unfit for the society of any woman outside a wigwam.

"Oh, you make me tired," cried Barbara, at last. "I'm going to bed.
Hilary, give him a strait-waistcoat. He's a lunatic."

The household resources not including a strait-waistcoat, I could not
exactly obey her, but as he had come down luggageless, and with a large
disregard of the hours of homeward trains, I lent him a suit of my
meagre pyjamas, which must have served the same purpose.

He left the next morning. Heedless of advice he called on Doria and was
denied admittance.