Outside supper had begun, and the servants were occupied. The hall was deserted when they came down, and, passing through, the two went out.
Meantime the evening progressed on the garden side of the house with ever-increasing gaiety. Everybody's characteristics, as happens so often at supper-parties which are sundered from the previous dinner only by a short interval of whiskies-and-sodas, became rather more accentuated than before; every one was at philharmonic pitch, at their best, or, at any rate, at their worst.
Lady Ardingly was slightly drier and more staccato than usual, her husband sleepier; Arthur Naseby was shriller, Jack rather more impressively reticent; Andrew Brereton heavier, and his wife louder, larger, and coarser. She was flushed with triumph and other causes less metaphysical; to-night she seemed to herself at a bound to have vaulted again into the saddle of that willing animal the world, and a glorious gallop was assuredly hers. And Jack, who was certainly the man of the moment, was again in a comfortable little pannier on the off-side. At length Lady Ardingly rose.
"I should like to stop here till morning," she said, "and play Bridge. But it is already two, and we must get up to London. To whom can I give a lift? You are staying, I think, Jack. Who else?"
Lady Devereux and Arthur Naseby, it appeared, had already arranged to drive up together in her motor-brougham; the others were all staying in the house. Gradually they drifted there, and on the lawn the lights were extinguished. "Giving the moon a chance at last," as Arthur Naseby observed. As they crossed the lawn Jack saw that Marie's room was still lit. Then the non-residents took their carriages, and the residents their bed-candles. Mildred and Jack were the last to go upstairs.
"There is still a light in Marie's room," he said. "I will just go in and see how she is."
Mildred lingered outside, and he tapped gently, then entered. The draught between door and window blew the flame of the candle about. But inside the electric light burned steadily, only there was no one there.
He came out again.
"She is not there," he said; "nor has she been to bed."