He stood motionless, just opposite to the door of the Eccentric Club, careless of the crowd that passed and jostled him, lost in a startled dream.
Then he felt some one touch his arm, and, looking up quickly, saw that the young man who had sat by him in the theatre, and whom he had heard addressed as Sir Thomas Ducaine, was accosting him.
The baronet's face was white and frightened, and he seemed oblivious of all ordinary conventions.
"I say," he began, in a curiously high-pitched and nervous voice, "what does it all mean? You were sitting next to me, you know. And there was a girl I know well—very well indeed—with that man; but I thought she was in Wales—"
He broke off short, realizing that he was speaking to a total stranger.
"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "but I am unstrung, as I fancy most of us are to-night who have been to the Frivolity."
He lifted his hat mechanically, and was about to move away.
Hampson recollected a fact which he had hitherto forgotten. Sir Thomas had called out "Mary!" when the mysterious party of strangers had first appeared in the box.
"You mean Miss Lys?" he said.
The young man with great possessions stopped dead.