* * * * *

He had been in New York two weeks, enjoying existence in his own fashion, untroubled by any demands, questions, or scruples concerning responsibility, when a passionate letter from Portlaw disturbed the placid interlude: 

   “Confound it, Louis, haven’t you the common decency to come back
   when you know I’ve had a bunch of people here to be entertained?

   “Nobody’s heard a peep from you.  What on earth do you mean by
   this?

“Miss Palliser, Mrs. Ascott, Miss Cardross are here, also Wayward, and Gray Cardross—­which with you and Mrs. Malcourt and myself solves the Bridge proposition—­or would have solved it.  But without warning, yesterday, your sister and brother-in-law arrived, bag and baggage, and Mrs. Malcourt has given them the west wing of your house.  I believe she was as astonished as I, but she will not admit it.

“I don’t know whether this is some sorry jest of yours—­not that Lady Tressilvain and her noble spouse are unwelcome—­but for Heaven’s sake consider Wayward’s feelings—­cooped up in camp with his ex-wife!  It wasn’t a very funny thing to do, Louis; but now that it’s done you can come back and take care of the mess you’ve made.

“As for Mrs. Malcourt, she is not merely a trump, she is a hundred aces and a grand slam in a redoubled Without!—­if that’s possible.  But Mrs. Ascott is my pillar of support in what might easily become a fool of a situation.

“And you, you amateur idiot!—­are down there in town, humorously awaiting the shriek of anguish from me.  Well, you’ve heard me.  But it’s not a senseless shriek; it’s a dignified protest.  I tell you I’ve learned to depend on myself, recently—­at Mrs. Ascott’s suggestion.  And I’m doing it now by wiring Virginia Suydam to come and fill in the third table.

“Now I want you to come back at once.  If you don’t I’m going to have a serious talk with you, Louis.  I’ve taken Mrs. Ascott into my confidence more or less and she agrees with me that I ought to lay down a strong, rigid policy and that it is your duty to execute it.  In fact she also took me into her confidence and gave me, at my request, a very clear idea of how she would run this place; and to my surprise and gratification I find that her ideas of discipline, taste, and economy are exactly mine, although I thought of them first and perhaps have influenced her in this matter as I have in others.  That is, of course, natural, she being a woman.

“I think I ought to be frank with you, Louis.  It isn’t good form for you to leave Mrs. Malcourt the way you do every week or two and disappear in New York and give no explanation.  You haven’t been married long enough to do that.  It isn’t square to me, either.

“And while I’m about it I want to add that, at Mrs. Ascott’s suggestion—­which