The Castleford Conundrum

AS PHILIP CASTLEFORD came down the broad stairs, a faint burst of laughter reached him through the closed door of the drawing room. At the sound of his wife’s shrill titter rising above the bass of the two men’s voices, he winced and gave vent to his spleen in an ejaculation, all the more vehement because it was uttered under his breath.
“Damn those people!”
In that concise imprecation he included his wife, the two brothers of her first husband, and her companion, Constance Lindfield. He hesitated for a moment at the foot of the stair, trying to brace himself to face that hostile group; but his mental conflict was a pure make-believe, like a stage-fight with its foregone conclusion.