Lord Robert asked Mrs Halcut-Hackett if she would “take a turn” with him once round the room. She excused herself, making rather an awkward business of it:

“I fancy I said that I would keep this one for — I’m so sorry — Oh, yes — here he comes right now.”

Captain Withers had come from the farther side of the ballroom. Mrs Halcut-Hackett hurriedly got up and went to meet him. Without a word he placed his arm round her and they moved off together, Withers looking straight in front of him.

“Where’s Rory?” Lord Robert asked Lady Alleyn. “I expected to find him here tonight. He refused to dine with us.”

“Working at the Yard. He’s going north early tomorrow. Bunchy, that was your Captain Withers, wasn’t it? The man we saw at the Halcut-Hacketts’ cocktail-party?”

“Yes.”

“Is she having an affair with him, do you suppose? They’ve got that sort of look.”

Lord Robert pursed his lips and contemplated his hands.

“It’s not malicious curiosity,” said Lady Alleyn. “I’m worried about those women. Especially Evelyn.”

“You don’t suggest Evelyn—?”

“Of course not. But they’ve both got the same haunted look. And if I’m not mistaken Evelyn nearly fainted just then. Your friend Davidson noticed it and I think he gave her the scolding she needs. She’s at the end of her tether, Bunchy.”

“I’ll get hold of her and take her into the supper-room.”

“Do. Go after her now, like a dear man. There comes my Sarah.”

Lord Robert hurried away. It took him some time to get round the ballroom and as he edged past dancing couples and over the feet of sitting chaperones he suddenly felt as if an intruder had thrust open all the windows of this neat little world and let in a flood of uncompromising light. In this cruel light he saw the people he liked best and they were changed and belittled. He saw his nephew Donald, who had turned aside when they met in the hall, as a spoilt, selfish boy with no honesty or ambition. He saw Evelyn Carrados as a woman haunted by some memory that was discreditable, and hag-ridden by a blackmailer. His imagination leapt into extravagance, and in many of the men he fancied he saw something of the unscrupulousness of Withers, the pomposity of Carrados, and the stupidity of old General Halcut-Hackett. He was plunged into a violent depression that had a sort of nightmarish quality. How many of these women were what he still thought of as “virtuous”? And the débutantes? They had gone back to chaperones and were guided and guarded by women, many of whose own private lives would look ugly in this flood of hard light that had been let in on Lord Robert’s world. The girls were sheltered by a convention for three months but at the same time they heard all sorts of things that would have horrified and bewildered his sister Mildred at their age. And he wondered if the Victorian and Edwardian eras had been no more than freakish incidents in the history of society and if their proprieties had been as artificial as the paint on a modern woman’s lips. This idea seemed abominable to Lord Robert and he felt old and lonely for the first time in his life.

“It’s the business with Donald and this blackmailing game,” he thought as he twisted aside to avoid a couple who were dancing the rumba. He had reached the door. He went into the lounge which opened off the ballroom, saw that Evelyn Carrados was not there, and made for the staircase. The stairs were covered with couples sitting out. He picked his way down and passed his nephew Donald who looked at him as if they were strangers.

“No good trying to break that down,” thought Lord Robert. “Not here. He’d only cut me and someone would notice.” He felt wretchedly depressed and tired, and was filled with a premonition of disaster that quite astonished himself. “Good God,” he thought suddenly, “I must be going to be ill.” And oddly enough this comforted him a little. In the lower hall he found Bridget O’Brien with a neat, competent-looking young woman whose face he dimly remembered.

“Now, Miss Harris,” Bridgie was saying, “are you sure you’re getting on all right? Have you had supper?”

“Well, thank you so much, Miss O’Brien, but really it doesn’t matter—”

Of course, it was Evelyn’s secretary. Nice of Evelyn to ask her. Nice of Bridgie to take trouble. He said:

“Hullo, m’dear. What a grand ball. Has your mother come this way?”

“She’s in the supper-room,” said Bridget without looking at him, and he realized that of course she had heard Donald’s side of their quarrel. He said:

“Thank you, Bridgie, I’ll find her.” He saw Miss Harris was looking a little like a lost child so he said: “Wonder if you’d be very nice and give me a dance later on? Would you?”

Miss Harris turned scarlet and said she would be very pleased thank you, Lord — Lord Gospell.

“Got it wrong,” thought Lord Robert. “Poor things, they don’t get much fun. Wonder what they think of it all. Not much, you may depend upon it.”

He found Lady Carrados in the supper-room. He took her to a corner table, made her drink champagne and tried to persuade her to eat.

“I know what you’re all like,” he told her. “Nothing all day in your tummies and then get through the night on your nerves. I remember mama used to have the vapours whenever she gave a big party. She always came round in time to receive the guests.”

He chattered away, eating a good deal himself and getting over his own unaccountable fit of depression in his effort to help Lady Carrados. He looked round and saw that the supper-room was inhabited by only a few chaperones and their partners. Poor Davidson was still in Lucy Lorrimer’s toils. Withers and Mrs Halcut-Hackett were tucked away in a corner. She was talking to him earnestly and apparently with great emphasis. He glowered at the table and laughed unpleasantly.

“Lor’!” thought Lord Robert, “she’s giving him his marching orders. Now why’s that? Afraid of the General or of — what? Of the blackmailer? I wonder if Withers is the subject of those letters. I wonder if Dimitri has seen her with him some time. I’ll swear it was Dimitri’s hand. But what does he know about Evelyn? The least likely woman in the world to have a guilty secret. And, damme, there is the fellow as large as you please, running the whole show.”

Dimitri had come into the supper-room. He gave a professional look round, spoke to one of his waiters, came across to Lady Carrados and bowed tentatively and then went out again.

“Dimitri is a great blessing to all of us,” said Lady Carrados. She said it so simply that he knew at once that if Dimitri was blackmailing her she had no idea of it. He was hunting in his mind for something to reply when Bridget came into the supper-room.

She was carrying her mother’s bag.

Everything seemed to happen at the same moment. Bridget calling gaily: “Really, Donna darling, you’re hopeless. There was your bag, simply preggy with banknotes, lying on the writing-table in the green boudoir. And I bet you didn’t know where you’d left it.” Then Bridget, seeing her mother’s face and crying out: “Darling, what’s the matter?” Lord Robert himself getting up and interposing his bulk between Lady Carrados and the other tables. Lady Carrados half-laughing, half-crying and reaching out frantically for the bag. Himself saying: “Run away, Bridget, I’ll look after your mother.” And Lady Carrados, in a whisper: “I’m all right. Run upstairs, darling, and get my smelling-salts.”

Somehow they persuaded Bridget to go. The next thing that happened was Sir Daniel Davidson, who stood over Evelyn Carrados like an elegant dragon.

“You’re all right,” he said. “Lord Robert, see if you can open that window.”

Lord Robert succeeded in opening the window. A damp hand seemed to be laid on his face. He caught sight of street lamps blurred by impalpable mist.

Davidson held Lady Carrados’s wrist in his long fingers and looked at her with a sort of compassionate exasperation.