t too much absorbed in these speculations to see that
Ted was behaving very prettily to old Miss Craven, and making himself
useful by filling up awkward pauses with irrelevant remarks. The boy
looked perfectly happy. Audrey's mere presence seemed to satisfy him,
though she had not spoken a dozen words to him that evening, and was
separated from him by the length of the table. At last she rose, and as
he held the door open for her to go out, she turned to him with arched
eyebrows and a smile that was meant to say, "You've been shamefully
neglected, I know, but I had to attend to these tiresome people."
Katherine saw Mr. Wyndham making a mental note of the look and the
smile. She had taken an instinctive dislike to that man.

Upstairs in the drawing-room the five women settled down in a
confidential group, and with one accord fell to discussing Mr. Wyndham.
Miss Craven began it by mildly wondering whether he "looked so
disagreeable on purpose, or because he couldn't help it." On the whole,
she inclined to the more charitable view.

"What do you say, Kathy?" asked Audrey, without looking up.

"I agree with Miss Craven in thinking nature responsible for Mr.
Wyndham's manners."

Mrs. Dixon Barnett disapproved of Katherine, but she joined in here with
a guttural assent.

"Poor man," said Miss Gladys Armstrong, "he certainly hasn't improved
since that affair with Miss Fraser."

Audrey looked up suddenly,--"What affair?"

"Don't you know? They were engaged a long time, wedding-day fixed and
everything, when she broke it off suddenly, without a word of warning."

"Why?"

"Why indeed! She left her reasons to the imagination."

"When did it happen?"

"Just about this time last year. I can't think what made her do it,
unless she had a turn for psychical research--raking in the ashes of his
past, and that sort of thing."

"Was he very much cut up about it?"

"He didn't whine. But he's got an ugly wound somewhere about him.
Curious man, Langley Wyndham. I haven't got to the bottom of him yet;
and I flatter myself I know most men. My diagnosis is generally pretty
correct. He's a very interesting type."

"Very," said Audrey below her breath. The novelist knitted her brows and
fell into a reverie. Her interest in Langley Wyndham was not a purely
professional one. Audrey reflected too. "Just about this time last year.
That might account for things." She would have liked to ask more; but
further discussion of his history