CHAPTER IV.

Morris mumbled something of repeated apology and made a movement to leave the room.

Ainsworth stopped him.

"I'll find Britton," he said. "This mess has to be straightened out, and it wouldn't do for you to wander round till you meet him and raise Cain before a lot of women. I'll bring him here in a minute."

"You're kind," grunted the other, sarcastically, "but I'll wait for you."

The lawyer hastened out, peering into the different rooms in search of the man he wanted. He suspected that he would find the woman with Britton, and as he sought, unheeding acquaintances or greetings, he came upon the couple in the dining-room.

They were standing at the buffet, chatting and laughing and partaking of the six-franc supper which Britton had mentioned to his friends. The dining-hall was full, and Ainsworth hesitated at the door. He had a peculiar and intense hatred of scenes, and he knew that this company, consisting partly of bored aristocracy and partly of different gradings of the vulgar rich, was ready to stare and laugh at an unconventional act, as, for instance, the interruption of someone's luncheon.

Britton espied him at the door, and cut short his vacillation by beckoning him over, making room for him at the same time. Ainsworth approached them grimly.

"Have you not had lunch?" Britton inquired cheerily. "Come, there's room here. We'll wait for you."

"I couldn't eat a bite," said the lawyer, truthfully. "I wanted to speak to you for a moment, if you're through. That's all."

He avoided the eyes of Maud Morris and did not attempt to address her directly.

"There's the after-lunch dance, you know," objected Britton. "It's a matter of etiquette with these people."

"Can't you let it go?" asked the lawyer, sharply.

His tone awakened his friend's scrutiny. "What's the matter?" he asked. "How long do you want me?"

"It may be some time," answered Ainsworth. "I wish you would come immediately."

Maud Morris smiled full upon the lawyer and forced him to meet her glorious eyes.

"Just one round," she pleaded prettily, with a nod towards the ballroom.

At that moment Ainsworth was transformed, in his own mind, into the grim master of life. The other two were the trifling, wayward children to whom chastisement would presently come. It did not matter if, in their ignorance, they coveted those few turns together; they could have their gambols just on the eve of disillusionment! It might help the cure of Britton's malady when Ainsworth would afterwards remind him of the incident.

"By all means," he said sarcastically. "It will satisfy these sticklers."

They swept merrily into the adjacent ballroom, and Ainsworth followed as far as the entrance. The occasion struck him with a certain grim humor, and he chuckled silently as he stood in the alcove watching the couple circling to the orchestra's music.

They floated slowly, as in a delightful dream, round the immense and gorgeously-decorated salon, the woman looking upward ecstatically, with her face aquiver with light, and whispering with both lips and eyes. Britton, oblivious to the irony of the situation, had forgotten even Ainsworth. He was plunged in the joy of the moment, and the watching lawyer could imagine what words he was murmuring in the meshes of her hair.

Then, in the midst of his ironical judgment, a pang of something nearly akin to pity moved Ainsworth. For an instant he debated with himself the issue if this amour should prove genuine on both sides, but the thought was immediately dismissed by his cynical reasoning as improbable. The man was in earnest, but the woman was a siren, in Ainsworth's critical view.

One round of the ballroom floor was all the enjoyment they allowed themselves, for the lawyer significantly stepped out when they reached the entrance curtains. Britton looked at him vaguely and contracted his brows in a half-frown when he remembered.

He led the lady to a settee and bent over her for a moment.

"You will come back soon?" she whispered with a shade of wistfulness.

Britton pressed her fingers on her fan under pretence of examining it.

"Yes," he promised, glorying in the depths of her eyes, "I'll come back, not soon, but at once. Our dance isn't finished, you know."

He strode across the room, tall and elegant, and smiling over his shoulder so that the woman's heart leaped oddly as she watched him.

"Now, Ainsworth," he said, laying a hand on his comrade's arm, "what do you want with me? You'll please hurry, won't you?"

The lawyer drew Britton's arm tightly through his own and turned across the main promenade.

"That woman's married," he said with brutal directness, "and I'm taking you to her husband."

Britton whipped out his arm from Ainsworth's grasp and held it upraised, as if to deliver a blow, while a red wave of denunciation flamed over his fine features.

"You-" he began, and halted, for the grim, set look in his companion's eyes carried undeniable conviction.

"Strike me if you like," Ainsworth observed harshly, "but come this way with me."

Britton's fist fell to his side, and he drew his whole frame rigidly erect in a sort of convulsive movement. In spite of his great strength he staggered a little, and his face was ashy-white.

He turned irresolutely back towards the entrance of the dancing salon, but Ainsworth took his arm again.

"No, this way," he urged, and led him as he would a boy.

People marked his rigid muscles and pallid skin, and murmured compassionately at the apparent stroke of illness.

"Hello, old chap!" cried one of his numerous acquaintances, shouldering up, "what's wrong? Heat too much for you? By Jove, you're in a beastly funk, and I don't wonder, for it's deuced close in here."

The lawyer waved him aside, and they went on, while all the guests began to complain of heat, and the assiduous concierge ran to open wider the French casements on the lawns.

Once or twice Ainsworth looked up at his companion. Britton's pallor and tremendous calm, so suggestive of the latent volcanic powers, alarmed the lawyer.

"How do you feel?" he whispered sympathetically.

"I feel nothing-absolutely nothing," responded Britton, in a dull, passionless tone, and Ainsworth did not doubt him for a moment.

"Where is your man?" he asked after a second, in the same listless and unimpassioned voice.

"Here, in this room," Ainsworth answered, entering the billiard parlors. They skirted the tables and came where Morris stood with Trascott.

"Here is the man Morris," he announced in a measured manner. "Morris, this is Britton."

As Ainsworth spoke, he braced himself to guard against a hundred ugly possibilities which this meeting presented. He scanned the lineaments of the two men, alert to catch the nerve purpose dependent upon each one's expression, and in thus studying the features of Morris he lost sight of the latter's hands, which were thrust loosely in the pockets of his coat.

The husband's narrow eyes glittered; his lips were drawn back over his teeth in a wolfish snarl; all his capability for extreme hate seemed to be given free scope as he centred ferocious glances on the stony countenance of Rex Britton.

The other occupants of the room instinctively felt that the atmosphere held some vital and dramatic portent. They stopped their play and gazed wonderingly on the group over by the corner table.

There the two principal figures glared at each other without uttering a word, the one standing upright with set face and folded arms, the other crouching like a beast ready to spring in rage.

Ainsworth had never felt such a tense moment, even in his pleadings before tightly-packed courts of law. He was involuntarily forced to hold his breath in suspense, and a band of steel seemed to rim his chest. Trascott, with his habitual, comforting sanity, offered no speech. He recognized arbitration to be as futile as it was inconceivable. Things must run their course. Only he was ready, like Ainsworth, to guard against deadly violence following the outbreak.

For some moments Morris crouched and glared, a malicious quiver running through him. Then if any of the men had watched where his right hand was hidden they might have seen the cloth of the pocket poked forward by something cylindrical inside.

A stunning report, coming apparently from nowhere, shook the windows. Britton reeled, as a tuft of hair floated off from above his temple, and jumped like the recoil of a spring upon his would-be murderer. He dealt two sharp, quick blows before the weapon could be pulled again, and the thing was all over.

Morris lay in a quiet heap, with threads of white smoke drifting up from the powder-blackened hole in his pocket.

Britton rubbed the red welt along his scalp and nodded gravely to Ainsworth.

"You're my counsel in this matter, of course," he said. "Attend to whatever explanations are needed! Trascott, will you come with me?"

They elbowed out through the motley, clamorous, ever-increasing crowd that the pistol-shot had gathered.

"What do you mean to do?" asked the curate, anxiously.

"The hardest thing I ever did," Britton answered pitifully. "I want you, because I doubt if I can do it alone. I'm afraid of myself, Trascott!"