Jimmy Wilberforce, who had not seen Mollie since his talk with Bunce and spent four sleepless nights in consequence, set out for that interview with the uncomfortable foreboding that the "old lady's will" was only a pretext for discussing the old lady's son. And the foreboding justified itself before he had been with her ten minutes.

"I suppose," said Julia, eying him across the Empire desk of her work-room, "that you, as Ronnie's best friend, are very much in his confidence?"

"How do you mean?" prevaricated the big red lawyer. "About his financial affairs?" He laughed, tapping the document between them. "Ronald isn't the sort of chap who'd borrow on his--er--expectations."

"I was not referring to his financial affairs," retorted Julia stiffly. "If you, as my son's best friend, and as the son of my own legal adviser, do not understand the matter to which I allude, the conversation need go no further."

Jimmy looked at his client, and noticed--for the first time since entering the little box of a room--how she had aged, how ill, how ill at ease, how unhappy she appeared. Jimmy, the man rather than the solicitor, was feeling very far from happy himself; and unhappiness, being a completely new experience, keyed him to unusual sympathy.

"We're in the same boat," he thought. "Poor old lady! I wonder how much she knows. Ronnie had no right to run away with H. B.'s wife. The harm it's done already! His mother looks quite broken up about it. And I--I can't marry Mollie."

"Mrs. Cavendish," he said, "I don't pretend to be as fond of your son as you are. I'm rather a selfish chap, I'm afraid. But if there's anything, any affair in which I can be of assistance to you--you've only to ask me."

She asked him, pointblank: "Do you know my son's where-abouts?"

He answered, "No. I didn't even know that he'd gone away, till his clerk told me."

Julia hesitated. "I'm speaking to you in absolute confidence?"

"Of course."

"Then please tell me: Have you heard any--any rumors?"

Jimmy chewed the cud for ten full seconds before replying: "You mean--about a certain lady?"

"I mean precisely that."

"So far, none." Now it was Jimmy's turn to hesitate. "But, speaking entirely in confidence, there are bound to be rumors--if he stays away much longer."

"You know nothing for certain then?"

"Officially--nothing." The solicitor inspected his finger nails. "But I'm afraid that, unofficially, I know a good deal."

"Including the name of the lady?"

"Including the name of the lady!"

Julia's heart sank. Wilberforce could not be alone in his knowledge of the truth. And that meant--publicity! "Tell me, Mr. Wilberforce," she went on, "before we go any further: Is a barrister who has been co-respondent in a divorce case disbarred from further practice?"

"So she knows everything," thought Jimmy, and discarded finesse. "On that point I can reassure you. Even if the petitioner were himself a barrister, it would make no difference."

"You made inquiries then?"

"Yes."

"May I ask why?" Julia's manner stiffened again. The conversation was unutterably distasteful: but she had been alone with her thoughts so long that even the most distasteful of conversations seemed preferable to further silence.

"Because"--the man, moved by a similar impulse, laid all his cards, faced, on the table--"because the sister of the certain lady is a--a very great friend of mine."

"And if"--remembering the meeting in Hyde Park, the novelist's mind jumped instanter to its conclusion--"if the divorce we mentioned were to take place, it would make a difference to the outcome of that friendship?"

"I"--Jimmy stammered--"I'm afraid so."

Remembering Ronnie's letter, Julia Cavendish felt aware of a new pride in her son. Ronnie might have been guilty of a "lapse": but at least he had not been weak. For it was weak, pitifully weak, almost caddishly weak of a man even to contemplate ending his friendship with a girl because of a scandal in her family.

"I'm sorry to tell you then," she said, "officially, that your unofficial knowledge is perfectly correct. I have incontrovertible proof--a letter from him--that my son has run away with Hector Brunton's wife, and that they are now waiting for him to serve them with divorce-papers."

Jimmy Wilberforce's brown eyes darkened with pain. It had been bad enough to know the truth himself; but to hear it from some one else seemed for the moment unbearable.

"That," went on his client, "is why I wanted to see your father. Perhaps I'd better wait till he returns from Paris. You, obviously, will be a little--shall we say prejudiced?"

There are certain instants in a man's life when he comprehends his own character with revolting clarity. Such an instant those last words brought to the solicitor. In the light of them he saw himself as poor friend, as worse lover. He felt he could never again look Ronald or Mollie in the face.

"I hope your father will be back soon." continued Julia. "Naturally I'm rather anxious for his advice."

"Mrs. Cavendish"--Jimmy, contrary to her expectation, made no effort to go--"if I gave you the impression of prejudice by what I said just now, I'm sorry. My father will be away for at least another week. Meanwhile, I beg you to forget my own--er--personal interest in this matter; and to look upon me as--as a friend. You and Ronnie are in trouble; let me help you both to the best of my ability. Do you, by any chance, know Ronnie's address? If so, won't you, in strict confidence, let me have it?"

"I don't think I ought to do that without his permission," said Julia. "But I shall be very grateful for your advice. Tell me--I'm afraid I'm rather ignorant, wilfully ignorant perhaps, about these matters--how are divorces"--she stumbled over the word--"arranged?"

And James Wilberforce told her, in exact legal parlance, the whole nauseating procedure of the English courts. He spoke of orders for restitution, of "hotel evidence," of letters written at the dictation of solicitors, of damages and alimony, and of the king's proctor. Finally--and at this the whole soul of Julia Cavendish sickened--to illustrate a point, he told her the inside history of the Carrington case; how Carrington, in order to blacken his wife's name, had committed perjury in an undefended divorce-case, and how--for fear lest she should forfeit her freedom to marry the man she loved--Carrington's wife had been forced to endure the slander.

Jimmy's client sifted the whole information for some time.

"So you mean," she said at last, "that in this country any husband and wife who--'know the ropes,' I think, was your phrase--and possess sufficient money to fee a firm like your own, can secure a divorce with almost as little trouble as they can secure a marriage-license."

"I mean precisely that," replied Jimmy Wilberforce. "Given the mutual desire to undo their marriage, the law--properly worked--puts no obstacle in the way."

"But if, as in this Carrington business, the desire is not mutual. What then?"

"Then, of course, there are difficulties. Especially if it is the woman who wants her freedom. In our courts, you see, a husband is still his wife's legal owner; a woman merely her husband's chattel. A wife, against a husband unwilling to be divorced, must prove not only infidelity but cruelty--in the legal sense. And it has been held, over and over again, that infidelities--on the husband's part--are not cruelties. Cruelties--legally speaking--imply a damage to the wife's health." Jimmy reverted, once more, to the inside history of the Carrington case.

Julia Cavendish, too, thought of Carrington when she said:

"Mr. Wilberforce, let us be open with each other. My son's letter is quite frank. He says that he and Mrs. Brunton have run away together; that her husband knows all about it; that they are waiting for him to 'file his petition.' What happens if he refuses?"

"That," protested Wilberforce, "is hardly on the cards. A man of Hector Brunton's social status would never behave like Carrington."

"I agree." Julia, who had been feeling for an idea, broached it very tentatively. "All the same, Mr. Wilberforce, I flatter myself that my knowledge of human nature is not often at fault. I met Hector Brunton once; and I summed him up. Believe me, he's not quite--not quite normal where the sex is concerned. And with abnormals, the normal course of action can never be absolutely relied upon. You realize, of course, my--shall we say difficulties?--in making up my mind. It would help me considerably if I were certain of the course this man Brunton intended to adopt. Could you--do you think--ascertain it for me?"

"I'm afraid"--all the legal caution in Wilberforce's nature repelled the suggestion--"that with the best will in the world I couldn't do that. Brunton is a K.C.--a very important K.C. If, by any chance, he decides to wait a month or two----But really, Mrs. Cavendish, with all due deference to your knowledge of human nature, I don't think we need anticipate any trouble from Brunton. All we have to do--you and I--is to await events; to minimize the scandal as far as we can; and to watch over your son's interests until such time as he returns to London."

The solicitor excused himself, rose, and shook hands. "You can rely upon me, you know," he smiled.

But, once more solitary, Julia Cavendish felt that neither on James Wilberforce nor on any other lawyer could she place reliance. To lawyers, matrimony was a contract; to her it was a holy sacrament. Scandal, unpopularity, she could face; but not her own conscience. And conscience already made her accessory to the sin of adultery!

All her prejudices against divorce returned fourfold, submerging her intellect as in slime. After Wilberforce's revelations, the holy institution of matrimony seemed the unholiest of legal farces.

She rang for Kate and ordered her to bring tea. "I'm at home to nobody," said Julia; and all afternoon she sat brooding, love and beliefs at war in her mind. All afternoon, her mind pictured Ronnie; the happy babydom, the fine youth, the clean manhood of him. All afternoon her love strove to acquit him before the tribunal of her beliefs.

And as day waned the romantic in her began to see something splendid in him, some courage akin to her own.

But in the woman she could, as yet, see no courage. The woman had sinned, sinned the deadly sin. Her, one could never forgive!

And yet--and yet--how could a mother abandon her son?

Suppose her son married this sinner? Stubbornly her mind tried to picture Aliette married to Ronnie. Stubbornly conscience repelled the picture. "She is Aliette Brunton," said Julia's beliefs. "She can never be Aliette Cavendish."

Then imagination put back the clock of her own years so that she saw herself thirty again. At thirty one had illusions; one had one's fastidiousnesses. And Brunton was no husband for a fastidious woman. Brunton might easily be a man such as Wilberforce had hinted of; an unfaithful husband against whom his wife possessed no legal remedy. What then?

"Even then," said Julia's beliefs, "she should have endured--as you, too, must endure."

"Yet how can you endure?" asked love. "How can you side with a stranger against your own boy?"

"Soon," answered beliefs, "you must face your God. How splendid if, on that day, you can declare to Him: 'I, like You, sacrificed my only son.'"

But love said: "God and Love are one."

And in that one instant of thought Julia Cavendish crossed her mental Rubicon. Formal religion went by the board. Be he saint or sinner, sordid or splendid, she, Julia Cavendish, would stick by her boy.