slightly surprised,
slightly amused, but to his credit be it stated that he put no
equivocal construction upon the young lady's frank avowal. He felt a
little sorry for Ludovic, that was all, fearing the latter's good
fortune was less fully established than he had supposed.

"No, I don't believe very much in marriage--modern, upper-class
marriage," she repeated. "And, just precisely on that account, it seems
to me all the more degrading and shameful that a girl should risk
marrying the wrong man. People talk about a broken engagement as though
it was a disgrace. I can't see that. An unwilling, a--a--loveless
marriage is the disgrace. And so at the very church door I would urge
and encourage a woman to turn back, if she doubted, and have done with
the whole thing."

"Upon my word!" murmured Lord Shotover.--The infinite variety of the
feminine outlook, the unqualified audacity of feminine action, struck
him as bewildering. Talk of women's want of logic! It was their
relentless application of logic--as they apprehended it--which
staggered him.

Honoria had come close to him. In her excitement she laid her fan on
his arm.

"Listen," she said, "listen how Lady Constance is crying. Come--you
must know what is happening. You must comfort her."

The young man thrust his hands into his pockets with an air of
good-humoured and despairing resignation.

"All right," he replied, "only I tell you what it is, Miss St. Quentin,
you've got to come too. I refuse to be deserted."

"I have not the smallest intention of deserting you," Honoria said.
"Even yet discretion, though so lately chucked, might return to you.
And then you might cut and run, don't you know."

CHAPTER VII

RECORDING THE ASTONISHING VALOUR DISPLAYED BY A CERTAIN SMALL MOUSE IN
A CORNER

As Honoria St. Quentin and the reluctant Shotover stepped, side by
side, from the warmth and dimness obtaining in the anteroom, into the
pleasant coolness of the moonlit balcony, Lady Constance Quayle,
altogether forgetful of her usual careful civility and pretty
correctness of demeanour, uttered an inarticulate cry--a cry, indeed,
hardly human in its abandon and unreasoning anguish, resembling rather
the shriek of the doubling hare as the pursuing greyhound nips it
across the loins. Regardless of all her dainty finery of tulle, and
roses, and flashing diamonds, she flung herself forward, face
downwards, across the coping of the balustrade, her bare arms
outstret