The misgivings returned. Had Connie cared?
"Oh, quite all right, I think, mother."
What business had Muriel with misgivings? Mrs. Hammond was pitifully tired and needed to be reassured.
"Well, good night, then, dear. We needn't have worried, need we? Really, I'm very glad that it has turned out like this. He is rather a commonplace young man."
"Oh, I never thought that there was anything in it."
The memory of Connie's face before she had laughed returned to Muriel. Yet she could not have cared for him, not Connie, for that little man.
"Well, then, it all went off very nicely."
"Very. Good night."
The door closed. Her mother's soft slippers padded away down the passage, and Muriel went to bed. But through the early morning darkness her thoughts strayed in drowsy confusion, and she saw again the glittering ball-room, and heard that horrible laugh from behind the screen, and saw, though she had forgotten them during the curious evening, the mocking eyes of a girl in the rain-dark street.