he had
again shrugged his shoulders at Sheila, 'I'll put out the light.'

The night air flowed into the dark house as Danton hastily groped his
way out of the dining-room.

'There's only one thing,' said Sheila slowly. 'When I last saw my
husband, you know, he was, I think, the least bit better. He was always
stubbornly convinced it would all come right in time. That's why,
I think, he's been spending his--his evenings away from home. But
supposing it did?'

'For my part,' said Mrs Lovat, breathing the faint wind that was rising
out of the west, 'I'd sigh; I'd rub my eyes; I'd thank God for such an
exciting dream; and I'd turn comfortably over and go to sleep again. I'm
all for Arthur--absolutely--back against the wall.'

'For my part,' said Danton, looming in the dusk, 'friend or no friend,
I'd cut the--I'd cut him dead. But don't fret, Mrs Lawford, devil or no
devil, he's gone for good.'

'And for my part--' began Mr Craik; but the door at that moment slammed.

Voices, however, broke out almost immediately in the porch. And after
a hurried consultation, Lawford in his stagnant retreat heard the door
softly reopen, and the striking of a match. And Mr Craik, followed
closely by Danton's great body, stole circumspectly across his dim
chink, and the first adventurer went stumbling down the kitchen
staircase.

'I suppose,' muttered Lawford, turning his head in the darkness, 'they
have come back to put out the kitchen gas.'

Danton began a busy tuneless whistle between his teeth.

'Coming, Craik?' he called thickly, after a long pause.

Apparently no answer had been returned to his inquiry: he waited a
little longer, with legs apart, and eyeballs enveloped in brooding
darkness. 'I'll just go and tell the ladies you're coming,' he suddenly
bawled down the hollow. 'Do you hear, Craik? They're alone, you know.'
And with that he resolutely wheeled and rapidly made his way down
the steps into the garden. Some few moments afterwards Mr Craik shook
himself free of the basement, hastened at a spirited trot to rejoin his
companions, and in his absence of mind omitted to shut the front door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Lawford sat on in the darkness, and now one sentence and now another of
their talk would repeat itself in his memory, in much the same way as
one listlessly turns over an antiquated diary, to read here and there a
flattened and almost meaningless sentiment. Sometimes a footstep passed
echoing along the p