“You look tired to death, my dear,” she commented, as Hilary came in.  Her kindly grey eyes turned from him to Peter, who had looked up from the book he was reading with a nervous movement.  Peter’s sweet-tempered companionableness had been oddly obscured this evening.  Perhaps he too was tired to death.  And poor little Rhoda had been so unmercifully snubbed all the evening that at last she had crept up to bed all but in tears.  Peggy felt very sorry for everyone to-night; they all seemed to need it so much.

Vyvian, as usual, had a headache.  When Hilary came in, he rose and said he was going upstairs to try and get some sleep—­an endeavour seldom successful in this noisy and jarring world, one gathered.  Before he embarked on it he said to Peter, squirting soda into a large tumbler of whisky, “Stefani want anything particular to-day?”

He had waited to say it till Hilary came in.  Peter supposed that he said it merely out of his general desire to be unpleasant, and perhaps to revenge himself for that unanswered enquiry on the stairs.  Or possibly he merely wished to indicate to Peter how entirely he was privy to Stefani’s business with Hilary, and that it might just as well be discussed in his presence.  Or again, he might be desirous of finding out how far Peter himself was in the know.

Peter said, “Nothing very particular,” and bent over Illuminato, that he might not meet Hilary’s eyes or Peggy’s.  He knew that Hilary was violently startled, and he heard Peggy’s softly let out breath, that might have been a sigh or a gentle whistle, and that conveyed in either case dismay touched with a laugh.

Vyvian, who had been watching the three with a covert smile, drained his glass and said, “Well, it’s supposed to be partly my business, you know.  But since you don’t think so, I’ll say good-night.”

He included the three in a supercilious nod, and left the room.

He left a queer silence behind him.  When it had lasted for a moment, Peter looked up from his inspection of Illuminato’s screwed-up face, with an effort, and met Hilary’s eyes searching his own.  Peggy was in the background; later she would be a comforting, easing presence; but for the moment the situation held only these two, and Peter’s eyes pleaded to Hilary’s, “Forgive me; I am horribly sorry,” and in Hilary’s strained face shame intolerably grew, so that Peter looked away from it, bending over Illuminato in his arms.

It was Peggy who broke the silence with a tearful laugh.

“Oh, don’t look like that, you poor darling boys!  Peter, little dear Peter ... you must try and understand!  You’re good at understanding, you know.  Oh, take it easy, my dear!  Take it easy, and see how it’s nothing to matter, how it’s all one great joke after all!” Her arm was round his shoulders as he sat on the table’s edge; she was comforting him like a child.  To her he was always about Illuminato’s age, a most beloved infant.