'So little! Good-night, Lady Charlotte!' and giving her hand first to her hostess then to Mr. Flaxman's bewildered sister, she moved away into the crowd.
'Hugh, of course you are going down with her?' exclaimed Lady Charlotte under her breath. 'You must. I promised to see her safely off the premises.'
He stood immovable. Lady Helen with a reproachful look made a step forward, but he caught her arm.
'Don't spoil sport,' he said, in a tone which, amid the hum of discussion caused by the experiment, was heard only by his aunt and sister.
They looked at him—the one amazed, the other grimly observant—and caught a slight significant motion of the head towards Langham's distant figure.
Langham came up and made his farewells. As he turned his back, Lady Helen's large astonished eyes followed him to the door.
'Oh, Hugh!' was all she could say as they came back to her brother.
'Never mind, Nellie,' he whispered, touched by the bewildered sympathy of her look; 'I will tell you all about it to-morrow. I have not been behaving well, and am not particularly pleased with myself. But for her it is all right. Poor, pretty little thing!'
And he walked away into the thick of the conversation.
Downstairs the hall was already full of people waiting for their carriages. Langham, hurrying down, saw Rose coming out of the cloak-room, muffled up in brown furs, a pale child-like fatigue in her looks which set his heart beating faster than ever.