"Not this one; perhaps a little later on."
"As you please, of course," returns he, as, with a frown and an inward determination never to ask her again, he walks away.
In the ball-room he meets Luttrell, evidently on the lookout for a missing partner.
"Have you seen Miss Massereene?" he asks instantly. "I am engaged to her, and can see her nowhere."
"Try one of those nests for flirtation," replies Stafford, bitterly, turning abruptly away, and pointing toward the room he has just quitted.
But Luttrell goes in a contrary direction. Through one conservatory after another, through ball-room, supper-room, tea-room, he searches without success. There is no Molly to be seen anywhere.
"She has forgotten our engagement," he thinks, and feels a certain pang of disappointment that it should be so. As he walks, rather dejectedly, into a last conservatory, he is startled to find Marcia there alone, gazing with silent intentness out of the window into the garden beneath.
As he approaches she turns to meet his gaze. She is as pale as death, and her dark eyes are full of fire. The fingers of her hand twitch convulsively.
"You are looking for Eleanor?" she says, intuitively, her voice low, but vibrating with some hidden emotion. "See, you will find her there."
She points down toward the garden through the window where she has been standing, and moves away. Impelled by the strangeness of her manner, Luttrell follows her direction, and, going over to the window, gazes out into the night.