Over a snack of luncheon--snatched late and hastily at a little uncomfortable coffee-shop near the Griffin--Ronnie's usual calm returned. He realized that he had made a fool of himself in going to see Brunton; that Jimmy, after all, had been right. Confound Brunton! Brunton's "dog-in-the-manger" attitude would not endure, could not endure. Even Carrington had given way in the long run. It was only a question of patience. Still, he would have to break things very gently to Aliette's sister.

Betty Masterman was out; and Mollie received her sister's lover alone in the little red-papered sitting-room which seemed so cozy to the Philistine mind of James Wilberforce.

"It's nice of you to call," she said perfunctorily. The voice might have been that of Aliette, of the socially poised Aliette as Ronnie first remembered her: but the girl's violet eyes were stern with suspicion; her red lips showed unsmiling, uncompromising.

"Won't you sit down?" she went on.

"Thanks. I sha'n't keep you very long." Always impossibly shy with women, the man did not know how to begin.

"You've got some message for me," the girl prompted "Some message from----"

"From your sister."

She seated herself, avoiding his eyes.

"Your sister and I," he began bruskly----

And in those four words--even without the halting explanation which followed--it seemed to Mollie Fullerford that she knew the whole story. But she was not going to help him out. Why should she? The story--carefully though he told it--revolted her. She felt hot; hot and dirty and ashamed. Hurt, too, as though the healed scars of her bodily wounds were opening afresh. All the suspicions of the past weeks, all her still-smoldering resentment that Aliette should have let her return unwarned to Hector's house, all her balked love for James Wilberforce, harshened Mollie's judgment. She saw Cavendish no longer a "sober-sides" but a hypocrite; and so seeing, hated him for his imagined hypocrisy.

"You see," he concluded, "it wasn't Aliette's fault. I mean the running away in a hurry. You mustn't condemn her. I was to blame for that. I was to blame, from beginning to end."

"Of course," said that Mollie who had once thought "most women rotters." "It's always the man who's to blame."

Nevertheless her judgment softened. "After all," she thought, "he isn't beating about the bush. He's being perfectly straight with me." And she discovered to her great surprise that it was not their having run away together which had been hurting her, but their omission to take her into their confidence.

Ronnie, trying to guess the verdict behind those averted eyes, drew Aliette's letter from his pocket; and handed it over without another word. Watching her open the envelope, watching her as she read, he saw her fingers tremble, her violet eyes suffuse.

"And have you seen Hector?" she asked at last.

"Yes. I saw him this morning."

"What did he say?"

Ronnie hesitated to tell the brutal truth; and the girl repeated her question, adding:

"Of course he's going to divorce her."

"I'm afraid, Miss Fullerford, that it's not going to be quite so easy as that."

"You don't mean to say that he isn't going to----?"

"He says he hasn't made up his mind----"

"But"--the girl was stammering now--"that's absolutely caddish. Hector's a gentleman. Alie's been perfectly straight with him. Besides, even if he had been badly treated, he couldn't, couldn't possibly----"

And suddenly the full possibilities of Hector's persisting in a refusal to take action grew visible to the girl's mind. She braced herself to meet those possibilities; the personal consequences of them. She forced herself to ask:

"Have you seen Mr. Wilberforce?"

"Yes. Last night."

"Did you ask his advice?"

"Yes."

"What was it?"

"To do nothing. To wait."

At that, thought of her own love affair obsessed the girl's mind. She visualized James, there, in the very chair which Cavendish occupied. Remembering a thousand unspoken hesitancies of James, she saw only too clearly the reason of those hesitancies.

"How long has Mr. Wilberforce known about--about you and my sister?"

"Some weeks, I believe."

"You're sure?" The wounds hurt again, hurt desperately. James ought to have told her. "He never said a word--to me." She could have borne it better from James than from Cavendish.

"Of course he couldn't tell you anything about it, Miss Fullerford. It was a secret, a professional secret. My mother told him----"

"Your mother?"

"Yes, my mother. She's with Aliette now." His voice softened. "She's on our side. You'll be on our side, too? Won't you? You won't let this--this contretemps come between you and your sister? I'm not asking anything for myself--but it's pretty rough luck on Alie."

Mollie's decision crystallized. "I can't go back on Alie," she thought. "Whatever happens I mustn't go back on Alie." She remembered their conversation at Moor Park; remembered herself saying, "I don't believe divorce is wrong."

"Yes," she said, and held out her hand. "I shall stand by Alie whatever happens. Will you tell her that? And say I'll write in a day or two. I don't feel like--like writing to her at the moment."

Ronnie clasped her hand, and rose to go. He would have liked to thank her; he would have liked to say something more about Jimmy. But instinct restrained him. Perhaps, after all, she didn't care for Jimmy; perhaps the pallor of her cheeks, the drooped corners of her full red mouth were all for Alie.