departure. The tete-a-tete had not been a pleasant one, at any
rate as far as Francesca was concerned, but at least it had brought
her the information for which she had been seeking. Her role of
looker-on from a tactful distance had necessarily left her much in
the dark concerning the progress of the all-important wooing, but
during the last few hours she had, on slender though significant
evidence, exchanged her complacent expectancy for a conviction that
something had gone wrong. She had spent the previous evening at
her brother's house, and had naturally seen nothing of Comus in
that uncongenial quarter; neither had he put in an appearance at
the breakfast table the following morning. She had met him in the
hall at eleven o'clock, and he had hurried past her, merely
imparting the information that he would not be in till dinner that
evening. He spoke in his sulkiest tone, and his face wore a look
of defeat, thinly masked by an air of defiance; it was not the
defiance of a man who is losing, but of one who has already lost.

Francesca's conviction that things had gone wrong between Comus and
Elaine de Frey grew in strength as the day wore on. She lunched at
a friend's house, but it was not a quarter where special social
information of any importance was likely to come early to hand.
Instead of the news she was hankering for, she had to listen to
trivial gossip and speculation on the flirtations and "cases" and
"affairs" of a string of acquaintances whose matrimonial projects
interested her about as much as the nesting arrangements of the
wildfowl in St. James's Park.

"Of course," said her hostess, with the duly impressive emphasis of
a privileged chronicler, "we've always regarded Claire as the
marrying one of the family, so when Emily came to us and said,