The pleasure of the visit, so far as it had ever existed, was at an end.
* * * * * But before the Barnes motor departed homewards, Mrs.Fairmile had again found means to carry Roger Barnes out of sight and hearing into the garden.

Roger had not been able to avoid it; and Daphne, hugging the leather case, had, all the same, to look on.
When they were once more alone together, speeding through the bright sunset air, each found the other on edge.
"You were rather rough on the Duchess, Daphne!" Roger protested.

"It wasn't quite nice, was it, outbidding her like that in her own house ?" Daphne flared up at once, declaring that she wanted no lessons in deportment from him or anyone else, and then demanding fiercely what was the meaning of his two disappearances with Mrs.Fairmile.

Whereupon Roger lost his temper still more decidedly, refusing to give any account of himself, and the drive passed in a continuous quarrel, which only just stopped short, on Daphne's side, of those outrageous and insulting things which were burning at the back of her tongue, while she could not as yet bring herself to say them.
An unsatisfactory peace was patched up during the evening.

But in the dead of night Daphne sat up in bed, looking at the face and head of her husband beside her on the pillow.