“Wally,” she said in a low, quiet tone, fixing a singular gaze upon him, “Wally, I don’t know what to make of you lately.  The other night at Idle Hour, you hardly looked at me.  You and father spent the whole evening discussing some business or other—­”

“Most important business, my dear girl, I do assure you,” protested Waldron, trying to steady his voice.  “Most vitally—­”

“No matter about that,” she interposed.  “It could have been abridged, a trifle.  I barely got six words out of you, that evening; and let me tell you, Wally, a woman never forgets neglect.  She may forgive it; but forget it, never!”

“Oh, well, if you put it that way—­” he began, but checked himself in time to suppress the cutting rejoinder he had at his tongue’s end.

“I do, and it’s vital, Wally,” she answered.  “It’s all part and parcel of some singular kind of change that’s been coming over you, lately, like a blight.  You haven’t been yourself, at all, these few days past.  Something or other, I don’t know what, has been coming between us.  You’ve got something else on your mind, beside me—­something bigger and more important to you than I am—­and—­and—­”

He pulled out his gold cigar-case, chose and lighted a cigar to steady his nerve, and faced her with a smile—­the worst tactic he could possibly have chosen in dealing with this woman.  Supremely successful in handling men, he lacked finesse and insight with the other sex; and now that lack, in his moment of need, was bringing him moment by moment nearer the edge of catastrophe.

“I don’t like it at all, Waldron,” she resumed, again.  “You were late, the other night, in taking me to the Flower Show.  You were late, today, for our appointment here; and the ten minutes I gave you to get ready in, stretched out to twenty before you—­”

He interrupted her with a gesture of uncontrollable vexation.

“Really, my dear Kate,” he exclaimed, “if you—­er—­insist on holding me to account for every moment—­”

“You’ve been drinking, too, a little,” she kept on.  “And you know I detest it!  And just now, when I beat you in a square game, you so far forgot yourself as to swear.  Now, Waldron—­”

“Oh, puritanical, eh?” he sneered, ignoring the danger signals in her eyes.  Even yet there might have been some chance of avoiding shipwreck, had he heeded those twin beacons, humbled himself, made amends by due apology and promised reformation.  For though Catherine never had truly loved this man, some years older than herself and of radically different character, still she liked and respected him, and found him—­by his very force and dominance—­far more to her taste than the insipid hangers-on, sons of fortune or fortune-hunters, who, like the sap-brained Van Slyke, made up so great a part of her “set.”