"If Harry didn't know, I ought not to have told you, but I can't help it now."
"Edith, don't go. Wait."
"I can't. I have this next with my Lord, too. I'm going to sit it out in the library and meet him inside. The duchess is getting jealous. Besides, there comes the dragon." Judge Saxon, looking shabby and old and tired, was making a circuitous way toward them. "Let me go. Oh, darling—" she put her small, flushed face suddenly close to her friend's to ask the question, and after it, fluttered away without waiting for the answer, leaving the echo of her pretty, empty laugh behind—"why didn't Judith come? What's the real reason? Has anybody been making trouble for her here? Never mind. You needn't tell me. Good-bye."
Mrs. Randall closed her eyes and pressed two fingers against her temples for a moment, and then looked up with almost her usual welcoming smile at Judge Saxon, who had come close to her, and stood looking down at her keenly with his kind, near-sighted, blue eyes.
"Hiding?" he said. "Tired?"
"Not hiding from you. Take care of me."
"Minna," he decided, "you little girls aren't so nice to me unless you're in wrong somehow and feel sorry for yourselves. What's the matter? Where's Harry?"
"Inside somewhere. Don't ask me any more questions. I've answered all I can to-night."
"All right. I'll just sit here and enjoy the view and keep the other boys away."
The view was hardly one to promote unmixed enjoyment. The two settled into a friendly silence in their corner, broken by an occasional quiet word in the Judge's intimate, drawling voice. Around them the temper of the party was changing, and a series of little signs marked the general change. More men crowded into the smoking-room between dances, and they stayed longer. Mrs. Grant left first according to her established privilege, and a scattering of other guests followed her. Nobody seemed to miss them or to be conspicuously happier without them. There was a heavy, dull look about the passing faces, a heaviness and staleness now about the whole atmosphere of the party, and this, like the unnatural excitement which it followed, and like the light, endless fire of inconsequent, malicious chatter, always the same, whether it meant nothing or meant real trouble brewing, was an essential part of all the Colonel's parties, too.