Meanwhile, for the only character in our story who was not directly concerned with the feud of the Bruntons and the Cavendishes--to wit, Betty Masterman--the average metropolitan life went on. Betty Masterman, however, treating her self-invited guest with that lavish hospitality which provides bed and board without asking even companionship in exchange, lunching out, dining out, dancing and theatering, visiting and being visited by a horde of acquaintances, knew a good deal more about the progress of the feud than she confided to Mollie, and vastly more than Mollie confided to her.

Betty knew, for instance, that Hector Brunton, had it not been for the now full-blown scandal of his wife's desertion, would have been offered his knighthood; that Julia Cavendish, for the identical reason, had not been made a dame of the British Empire; that Dot Fancourt who, it was rumored, had been captured in betrothal by a middle-aged spinster of markedly reactionary views, never tired of lamenting "dear Julia's mistaken devotion to her son"; and that Sir Peter Wilberforce, whose baronetcy had been duly announced in the New Year's honors, was more than anxious that his son should get married.

To the grass-widow, it must be confessed, the feud itself seemed as petty as its ramifications ludicrous. Her own affair--the affair of the known husband who wrote every month from Toowoomba, Queensland, and the unknown lover who wrote almost every day from Queen's Gate, London--had always been one of those semi-public secrets which leave no speck upon the escutcheon. Aliette's method, therefor, appeared in her estimation foolish--though not quite so unnecessarily foolish as the scruples which prevented Mollie Fullerford from accepting the obvious heart and equally obvious hand of her Jimmy.

"Sorry, dear," Betty used to say, "but I can't see it. Either you're in love with the man or you're not. If you are in love with him, why on earth don't you marry him? He's got plenty of money; you've got a little money; and until you're tired of one another it ought to be ideal."

"You needn't be so beastly cynical," Mollie, ignorant of Queen's Gate, used to protest. "Just because your own marriage wasn't a success, there's no reason why mine shouldn't be. But I'm not going to marry Jimmy until he's arranged things between Alie and her husband."

"Suppose he can't arrange them, my dear?"

"Of course he can arrange them if he really wants to. He's a lawyer."

"You absolutely refuse to marry him until he does?"

"Absolutely."

Despite which repeated assurance, Mollie Fullerford knew that her decision weakened daily. It was all very well to pretend to Jimmy when he called, as he constantly did call, that there could be no hope for him until her wishes had been carried out; all very well, for the moment, to be reluctant in hand-clasps, grudging with kisses. But "that sort of thing" couldn't go on. It wasn't--Aliette's phrase--"dignified."

And besides--she felt herself growing far too fond of Jimmy for half-love. She wanted Jimmy; wanted him very badly; wanted him worse than she had ever wanted anything in her life. In point of fact--it had come to that now--she couldn't "jolly well live without Jimmy"; and would undoubtedly have yielded to Jimmy's persistence before the spring, had it not been for Eva Martin's interference.

That resolute lady of the cold blue eyes, the fading gold hair, and the hard unpleasant hands came to London early in January with the avowed intention of "putting matters straight once and for all." With Aliette, invited to luncheon at the Ladies' Army and Navy Club (irreverently known as "Arms and Necks" to junior subalterns), she failed completely, Ronnie's "wife" refusing, tight-lipped, even to discuss the situation. But with Mollie the sisterly machinations attained, in some slight degree, their trouble-making objective.

"You see, my dear," said the colonel's lady, "you're such a child that one really oughtn't to take you into one's confidence at all. But unfortunately this sort of thing can't be glossed over. In a way, I need hardly tell you, I'm very sorry for poor Alie. When I compare my own Harold with her Hector, I realize Hector's inferiority. All the same,"--this last with both elbows firmly on the tea-table--"the only course to be pursued, believe me, is for Aliette to return to her husband."

"But that would be perfectly beastly," retorted Mollie, the mild antagonism she had always felt for Eva turning to intensest dislike.

"Beastly or not," decided the colonel's lady, with some asperity, "it's the only thing to be done." And she added, with that bitter-sweetness which made Colonel Harold Martin look back upon the western front during the great war as the only peaceful place he had ever known: "Let me remind you, dear child, that there isn't only Alie to be considered. There are your own chances. You'll want to be getting married one of these days, and naturally, no man in a good position----"

The sentence trailed off into a silence as suggestive as the atmosphere Eva left behind her when she trailed out of Betty Masterman's flat; so strengthening the girl's weakened decision that Jimmy Wilberforce, who dropped in half an hour later to plead his own and his baronet father's cause, found himself confronted with a white face, a pair of haggard eyes, and the tense ultimatum, "Jimmy, I'll marry you the day Hector sets Alie free, but not a day before."

CHAPTER XXIII