Miss Forster was silent. That her visitor's words had affected her disagreeably her behaviour showed. Showing Miss Spurrier her back, facing the mantelshelf, she pretended to be interested by the trifles which were on it, but to an observant eye few things can be more eloquent than a person's back; the twitching of her shoulders was in itself more than sufficiently eloquent. Even her speech betrayed her; it faltered.

"Do you think--that he's left England?"

"It's on the cards. It all depends on whether he's had the chance. If he has, let's hope he'll be able to cover his tracks. I suppose nobody does know anything."

"How can I tell?"

"Exactly, how can you? It's queer that nothing has been found--of the body." The girl said nothing, but again Miss Spurrier noticed the twitching shoulders. "There's one thing, nothing can be done till it is found; and as it looks as if it is in a sure place, he ought to have something like a start before trouble begins."

The girl still continued silent. The visitor, holding out her gorgeous parasol, began to fasten the elastic band.

"Miss Forster, I am going away. I don't mean only from this room, but out of the country; I'm leaving England."

"Are you?" The girl's tone could scarcely have been more void of interest, but the other still kept her eyes upon her back.

"I'm going to be married."

"Indeed."

"I am going to be married to an old friend with whom I have been associated in some rather successful--matters; so, as we've got quite a nice little capital together, we've decided to turn over a new leaf. We're going to America, to a town in one of the middle States, where we have, both of us, reason to believe that there's an opening for an enterprising couple. We are going to start in the dry goods--a store. It's a trade in which we may both of us be able to show even the Americans a thing or two. We hope, by strict attention to business, to do well."

The visitor paused, but the girl said nothing; she still kept her face turned away.

"Of course, my prospects and intentions don't interest you, but now that I'm going to put the old things behind me and begin a new life, and leave England for ever--for we both of us intend at the earliest possible moment to become American citizens; you do get such a pull on the other side if you are a citizen--since you and I are alone together for probably the last time in our lives, there are one or two things which I should like to tell you about Mr. Beaton. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to see you. Wouldn't you like to hear them?"

"It depends on what they are. I should advise you to be careful what you say of him."

"Oh, I'll be careful. To begin with, Mr. Beaton is a gentleman, as I dare say you know."

"What do you suppose?"

"Now, my experience of what is called a gentleman in England is, that so long as he has got plenty of money to spend, and everything's made smooth for him, he may be quite a decent sort; but he's the most helpless creature on God's earth when his pockets are empty and he has to trust to himself to fill them. So long as he has friends to give him a lift he may manage somehow, but when his only friend is himself he's scrambling for crusts in the gutter almost before he himself knows it. To one who has had to earn his bread all his life by the sweat of his brow it's nothing less than amazing how soon he gets there. Mr. Sydney Beaton was in the gutter, and worse than the gutter, when I first met him."

At last Miss Forster did turn, and looked the speaker in the face.

"Where did you first meet him?"

Miss Spurrier was settling her beautiful hat upon her well-groomed head.

"It's not a pretty story--not very much to his credit or mine. You don't know how little of a hero a man can be when his stomach's empty and he has nothing to put into it, especially when he's a gentleman."

Apparently the visitor got her hat all right. She rested both hands on the handle of her parasol and she smiled.

"I want to slur over the disagreeable places in my story, Miss Forster--I always do like to avoid as much as possible what is unpleasant--and I don't want to keep you any longer than I can help. I want to get to what I'm after by the shortest possible way. You know what my profession is?"

"I can form a shrewd guess."

"I shouldn't be surprised; circumstances have helped you. But the world in general, Miss Forster, treats me as in every respect your equal. I was on my beam ends when I adopted it. I dare say you don't know what it is to be on your beam ends."

"I am thankful to say that is a condition of which I have no personal knowledge."

"You have cause to be thankful. Well, I have, and so has Sydney Beaton. If it hadn't been for me he'd have been dead long ago, with cold, misery and hunger."

"Is that true?"

"If you doubt it, you can. Say you don't believe me. Well--don't. I taught him one way of keeping himself alive and of putting money in his pocket, and he managed to do both. But it was a way he never liked; there were times when, I believe, that after all he would have rather starved."

"So I should imagine."

"Oh, you can imagine a great deal, I shouldn't wonder, but do you think you've imagination enough to enable you to put yourself in the place of the woman who was peddling matches at the corner of the street as we came along, with odd boots on--such boots!--and no stockings, and probably little more on than a skirt which it would make you uncomfortable to think of touching even with your finger-tips? You say you never could be in the position of such a woman--but he was."

One could see that, in spite of herself, Miss Forster shivered.

"Is that absolutely a fact?"

"The second time I met him he was carrying a sandwich-board in the Strand--now it's out--in that cold weather we had last January; and he hadn't three-penn'orth of clothing on him--three-pennyworth! Why, a rag-man would have wanted to be paid for carrying away what he had on. He was perished with the cold; he was nothing but skin and bone; misery and hunger had made him half-witted. In that weather he had slept out of doors every night--in the streets. He hadn't had six-pennyworth of food in a week. You stand there, well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed, and you think yourself a paragon of all the virtues, entitled to look down on such as I am, on what he became. You've not yourself to thank for being what you are. If you were to be stripped naked, and put into the woman's rags who was peddling matches, and had to live her life, for only a month, what kind of a fine lady, with pretty sentiments, do you think you'd be by then?"

Miss Spurrier had become suddenly so much in earnest that there was no doubt about her having succeeded in interesting Violet Forster at last. A light seemed to have come into her face, and a glow into her eyes.

"Do you really mean--that he was a sandwichman--in the Strand, one of those men who carry boards upon their backs?"

The visitor laughed as if she regretted the warmth to which she had given way; but there was something in her laughter which did not ring altogether true.

"Oh, I didn't mean to give myself away--or him either. I don't suppose he's very proud of his little experiences, so if you ever meet him again don't let him know that I told you; I shouldn't like him to think that I'd given him away on a thing like that--especially to you, because I happen to know that there's nothing in the world for which he cares except your good opinion, and that makes it so funny."

"How do you know he cares for my good opinion?"

"As if I didn't know! Why, he bought a portrait of yours in a picture paper; he cut it out, he made a little case for it--a sort of little silk bag stiffened with cardboard--he bought the silk himself, shaped it, put every stitch in it with his own needle and thread; he carried it about with him inside his shirt; I believe he said his prayers to it."

The girl had all at once grown scarlet; what was almost like a flame seemed blazing in her eyes.

"If--if he so wanted my portrait, how did you come to be possessed of that locket with my likeness in it?"

"That's one of the things of which I am ashamed; and, as I'm going to turn over a new leaf and become a respectable married woman, it's one which I want to make a clean breast of--to you. That locket was stolen from him when he was trying to get some sleep on one of the steps of the tunnel under Hungerford Bridge by two men who knew he had got it on him. One of them sold it to--an acquaintance of mine; he showed it to me, I recognised you from the picture he had cut out of the paper, and I bought it."

"Why didn't you give it back to Mr. Beaton? You knew that it was his."

"Well, that's one of the peculiarities of human nature. I didn't. I couldn't tell you why; at least, it would take me a very long time to do it; human nature is such a mass of complications and contradictions. I gave it to you instead."

"As if that were the same thing!"

"As if I didn't know that it wasn't. Haven't I admitted that that is something for which you are entitled to throw bricks at my head, or articles of furniture, or anything that comes handy?"

As the girl showed no inclination to throw anything, but stood there with that light still flaming in her eyes and her cheeks all glowing, Miss Spurrier went on, with something in her bearing more than a trifle malicious.

"Well, now that I've told you everything that I came to tell you, and all you want to know, I'm going."

She made a movement towards the door. The girl found her tongue.

"But you haven't told me anything; at least, I don't understand what it is you have told me."

"I've told you the one thing you want to know: that the one thing he values in the world is your good opinion; that still, although he's been very near to the gate of hell, he loves you. Good day."

"You swear that you don't know where he is?"

"I've no more idea of where he is, or where he has been, since that night at Avonham than you; and, as things are turning out, I would much rather continue in complete ignorance of his whereabouts until that business of Captain Draycott has blown over, which is a consummation devoutly to be hoped for. Is there any other question you would like to ask me?"

She stood by the door, presenting a sufficiently appetising picture of a pretty woman, fitly and gaily apparelled to take her walks abroad on a sunny day. Something which she perhaps saw in her face moved the girl to what, coming from her, was an unexpected confession.

"I'm not sure that I haven't been doing you an injustice."

The woman laughed.

"I shouldn't wonder. I've been doing the same to you. We are all of us continually doing each other an injustice; that sort of thing depends a good deal on the mood you're in and on whether the world is going well with us. I hope that, for both of us, in the future it will go very well indeed. Good-bye."

The woman was gone and the door was closed, and almost before she knew it the girl was left alone. Some few minutes later there came a tapping at the door; it was opened, and Major Reith came in. He found Violet Forster sitting on the floor beside the couch, her face pillowed on a cushion. When she raised it he saw that she was crying. The sight moved him to sympathy and anger.

"Miss Forster!" he exclaimed. "What has that abominable woman been saying--or doing?"

Her answer filled him with amazement.

"I'm not sure," she said, "that she is an abominable woman, and--I'm not sure that I'm not the happiest girl in the world."

It seemed such an astounding thing for her to say that he appeared to be in doubt as to whether he ought to credit the evidence of his own ears. But there was such a light upon her face, which was no longer white, and such a smile was shining from behind the tears that, almost incredible though he deemed it, he was forced to the conclusion that he must have heard aright, especially when, rising to her feet, she came close to him and laughed in his face.

"Yes," she told him, "you may stare; but at least I am not sure that I am not much happier than I deserve. And now I'll wash my face and dry my eyes, and I'll put my hat on straight; I know it's all lop-sided--you've no idea how easy it is for a woman's hat to get lop-sided--and then you can take me for that stroll in the park."