The rumour which was going the round of the clubs in due time reached Lady Cayley through the Ransomes. It roused in her many violent and conflicting emotions.

She sat trembling in the Ransomes' drawing-room. Mrs. Ransome had just asked whether there was anything in it; because if there was, she, Mrs. Ransome, washed her hands of her. She intimated that it would take a good deal of washing to get Sarah off her hands.

Sarah had unveiled the face of horror, the face of outraged virtue, and the wrath and writhing of propriety wounded in the uncertain, quivering, vital spot. During the unveiling Dick Ransome had come in. He wanted to know if Topsy had been bullying poor Toodles. Whereupon Topsy wept feebly, and poor Toodles had a moment of monstrous calm.

She wanted to get it quite clear, to make no mistake. They might as well give her the details. Majendie had left his wife, had he? Well, she wasn't surprised at that. The wonder was that, having married her, he had stuck to her so long. He had left his wife, and was living at Scarby, was he, with her? Well, she only wanted to get all the details clear.

At this Sarah fell into a fit of laughter very terrifying to see. Since her own sister wouldn't take her word for it, she supposed she'd have to prove that it was not so.

And, under the horror of her virtue and respectability, there heaved a dull, dumb fury, born of her memory that it once was, her belief that it might have been again, and her knowledge that it was not so. She trembled, shaken by the troubling of the fire that ran underground, the immense, unseen, unliberated, primeval fire. She was no longer a creature of sophistries, hypocrisies, and wiles. She was the large woman of the simple earth, welded by the dark, unspiritual flame.

Dick Ransome turned on his sister-in-law a pale, puffy face in which two little dark eyes twinkled with a shrewd, gross humour. Nothing could possibly have pleased Dick Ransome more than an exhibition of indignant virtue, as achieved by Sarah. He knew a great deal more about Sarah than Mrs. Ransome knew, or than Sarah knew herself. To Dick Ransome's mind, thus illumined by knowledge, that spectacle swept the whole range of human comedy. He sat taking in all the entertainment it presented; and, when it was all over, he remarked quietly that Toodles needn't bother about her proofs. He had got them too. He knew that it was not so. He could tell her that much, but he wasn't going to give Majendie away. No, she couldn't get any more out of him than that.

Sarah smiled. She did not need to get anything more out of him. She had her proof; or, if it didn't exactly amount to proof, she had her clue. She had found it long ago; and she had followed it up, if not to the end, at any rate, quite far enough. She reflected that Majendie, like the dear fool he always was, had given it to her himself, five years ago.

Men's sins take care of themselves. It is their innocent good deeds that start the hounds of destiny. When Majendie sent Maggie Forrest's handiwork to Mrs. Ransome, with a kind note recommending the little embroideress, by that innocent good deed he woke the sleeping dogs of destiny. Mrs. Ransome's sister had tracked poor Maggie down by the long trail of her beautiful embroidery. She had been baffled when the embroidered clue broke off. Now, after three years, she leaped (and it was not a very difficult leap for Lady Cayley) to the firm conclusion. Maggie Forrest and her art had disappeared for three years; so, at perilous intervals, had Majendie; therefore they had disappeared together.

Sarah did not like the look in Dick Ransome's eye. She removed herself from it to the seclusion of her bedroom. There she bathed her heated face with toilette vinegar, steadied her nerves with a cigarette, lay down on a couch and rested, and, pure from passion, revised the situation calmly. She was an eminently practical, sensible woman, who knew the facts of life, and knew, also, how to turn them to her own advantage.

Seen by the larger, calmer spirit that was Sarah now, the situation was not as unpleasant as it had at first appeared. To be sure, the rumour in which she had figured was fatal to the matrimonial vision, and to the beautiful illusion of propriety in which she had once lived. But Sarah had renounced the vision; she had abandoned the pursuit of the fugitive propriety. She had long ago seen through the illusion. She might be a deceiver, but she had no power to hoodwink her own indestructible lucidity. Looking back on her life, after the joyous romances of her youth, the years had passed like so many funeral processions, each bearing some pleasant scandal to its burial. Then there had come the dreary funeral feast, and then the days of mournful rehabilitation. Oh, that rehabilitation! There had been three years of it. Three years of exhausting struggle for a position in society, three years of crawling, and pushing, and scrambling, and climbing. There had been a dubious triumph. Then six years of respectable futility, ambiguous courtship, and palpable frustration. After all that, there was something flattering in the thought that, at forty-five, she should yet find her name still coupled with Walter Majendie's in a passionate adventure.

It might easily have been, but for Walter's imbecile, suicidal devotion to his wife. He had got nothing out of his marriage. Worse than nothing. He was the laughing-stock of all his friends who were in the secret; who saw him grovelling at the heels of a disagreeable woman who had made him conspicuous by her aversion. Of course, it might easily have been.

Sarah's imagination (for she had an imagination) drew out all the sweetness that there was for it in that idea. Then it occurred to her sound, prosaic commonsense that a reputation is still a reputation, all the more precious if somewhat precariously acquired; that, though you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, hanging is very poor fun when for years you have seen nothing of sheep or lamb either; that, in short, she must take steps to save her reputation.

The shortest way to save it was the straight way. She would go straight to Mrs. Majendie with her proofs. Her duty to herself justified the somewhat unusual step. And, more than her duty, Sarah loved a scene. She loved to play with other people's emotions and to exhibit her own. She wanted to see how Mrs. Majendie would take it; how the white-faced, high-handed lady would look when she was told that her husband had consoled himself for her high-handedness. She had always been possessed by an ungovernable curiosity with regard to Majendie's wife.

She did not know Majendie's wife, but she knew Majendie. She knew all about the separation and its cause. That was where she had come in. She divined that Mrs. Majendie had never forgiven her husband for his old intimacy with her. It was Mrs. Majendie's jealousy that had driven him out of the house, into the arms of pretty Maggie. Where, she wondered, would Mrs. Majendie's jealousy of pretty Maggie drive him?

Though Sarah knew Majendie, that was more than she would undertake to say. But the more she thought about it, the more she wondered; and the more she wondered, the more she desired to know.

She wondered whether Mrs. Majendie had heard the report. From all she could gather, it was hardly likely. Neither Mrs. Majendie nor her friends mixed in those circles where it went the round. The scandal of the clubs and of the Park would never reach her in the high seclusion of the house in Prior Street.

Into that house Lady Cayley could not hope to penetrate except by guile. Once admitted, straightforwardness would be her method. She must not attempt to give the faintest social colour to her visit. She must take for granted Mrs. Majendie's view of her impossibility. To be sure Mrs. Majendie's prejudices were moral even more than social. But moral prejudice could be overcome by cleverness working towards a formidable moral effect.

She would call after six o'clock, an hour incompatible with any social intention. An hour when she would probably find Mrs. Majendie alone.

She rested all afternoon. At five o'clock she fortified herself with strong tea and brandy. Then she made an elaborate and thoughtful toilette.

At forty-five Sarah's face was very large and horribly white. She restored, discreetly, delicately, the vanished rose. The beautiful, flower-like edges of her mouth were blurred. With a thin thread of rouge she retraced the once perfect outline. Wrinkles had drawn in the corners of the indomitable eyes, and ill-health had dulled their blue. That saddest of all changes she repaired by hand-massage, pomade, and belladonna. The somewhat unrefined exuberance of her figure she laced in an inimitable corset. Next she arrayed herself in a suit of dark blue cloth, simple and severely reticent; in a white silk blouse, simpler still, sewn with innocent daisies, Maggie's handiwork; in a hat, gay in form, austere in colour; and in gloves of immaculate whiteness.

Nobody could have possessed a more irreproachable appearance than Lady Cayley when she set out for Prior Street.

At the door she gave neither name nor card. She announced herself as a lady who desired to see Mrs. Majendie for a moment on important business.

Kate wondered a little, and admitted her. Ladies did call sometimes on important business, ladies who approached Mrs. Majendie on missions of charity; and these did not always give their names.

Anne was upstairs in the nursery, superintending the packing of Peggy's little trunk. She was taking her away to-morrow to the seaside, by Dr. Gardner's orders. She supposed that the nameless lady would be some earnest, beneficent person connected with a case for her Rescue Committee, who might have excellent reasons for not announcing herself by name.

And, at first, coming into the low lit drawing-room, she did not recognise her visitor. She advanced innocently, in her perfect manner, with a charming smile and an appropriate apology.

The smile died with a sudden rigour of repulsion. She paused before seating herself, as an intimation that the occasion was not one that could be trusted to explain itself. Lady Cayley rose to it.

"Forgive me for calling at this unconventional hour Mrs. Majendie."

Mrs. Majendie's silence implied that she could not forgive her for calling at any hour. Lady Cayley smiled inimitably.

"I wanted to find you at home."

"You did not give me your name Lady Cayley."

Their eyes crossed like swords before the duel.

"I didn't, Mrs. Majendie, because I wanted to find you at home. I can't help being unconventional—"

Mrs. Majendie raised her eyebrows.

"It's my nature."

Mrs. Majendie dropped her eyelids, as much as to say that the nature of Lady Cayley did not interest her.

"—And I've come on a most unconventional errand."

"Do you mean an unpleasant one?"

"I'm afraid I do, rather. And it's just as unpleasant for me as it is for you. Have you any idea, Mrs. Majendie, why I've been obliged to come? It'll make it easier for me if you have."

"I assure you I have none. I cannot conceive why you have come, nor how I can make anything easier for you."

"I think I mean it would have made it easier for you."

"For me?"

"Well—it would have spared you some painful explanations." Sarah felt herself sincere. She really desired to spare Mrs. Majendie. The part which she had rehearsed with such ease in her own bedroom was impossible in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room. She was charmed by the spirit of the place, constrained by its suggestion of fair observances, high decencies, and social suavities. She could not sit there and tell Mrs. Majendie that her husband had been unfaithful to her. You do not say these things. And so subdued was Sarah that she found a certain relief in the reflection that, by clearing herself, she would clear Majendie.

"I don't in the least know what you want to say to me," said Mrs. Majendie. "But I would rather take everything for granted than have any explanations."

"If I thought you would take my innocence for granted—"

"Your innocence? I should be a bad judge of it, Lady Cayley."

"Quite so." Lady Cayley smiled again, and again inimitably. (It was extraordinary, the things she took for granted.) "That's why I've come to explain."

"One moment. Perhaps I am mistaken. But, if you are referring to—to what happened in the past, there need be no explanation. I have put all that out of my mind now. I have heard that you, too, have left it far behind you; and I am willing to believe it. There is nothing more to be said."

There was such a sweetness and dignity in Mrs. Majendie's voice and manner that Lady Cayley was further moved to compete in dignity and sweetness. She suppressed the smile that ignored so much and took so much for granted.

"Unfortunately a great deal more has been said. Your husband is an intimate friend of my sister, Mrs. Ransome, as of course you know."

Mrs. Majendie's face denied all knowledge of the intimacy.

"I might have met him at her house a hundred times, but, I assure you, Mrs. Majendie, that, since his marriage, I have not met him more than twice, anywhere. The first time was at the Hannays'. You were there. You saw all that passed between us."

"Well?"

"The second time was at the Hannays', too. Mrs. Hannay was with us all the time. What do you suppose he talked to me about? His child. He talked about nothing else."

"I suppose," said Mrs. Majendie coldly, "there was nothing else to talk about."

"No—but it was so dear and naÏf of him." She pondered on his naÏvetÉ with down-dropped eyes whose lids sheltered the irresponsibly hilarious blue.

"He talked about his child—your child—to me. I hadn't seen him for two years, and that's all he could talk about. I had to sit and listen to that."

"It wouldn't hurt you, Lady Cayley."

"It didn't—and I'm sure the little girl is charming—only—it was so delicious of your husband, don't you see?"

Her face curled all over with its soft and sensual smile.

"If we'd been two babes unborn there couldn't have been a more innocent conversation."

"Well?"

"Well, since that night we haven't seen each other for more than five years. Ask him if it isn't true. Ask Mrs. Hannay—"

"Lady Cayley, I do not doubt your word—nor my husband's honour. I can't think why you're giving yourself all this trouble."

"Why, because they're saying now—"

Mrs. Majendie rose. "Excuse me, if you've only come to tell me what people are saying, it is useless. I never listen to what people say."

"It isn't likely they'd say it to you."

"Then why should you say it to me?"

"Because it concerns my reputation."

"Forgive me, but—your reputation does not concern me."

"And how about your husband's reputation, Mrs. Majendie?"

"My husband's reputation can take care of itself."

"Not in Scale."

"There's no more scandal talked in Scale than in any other place. I never pay any attention to it."

"That's all very well—but you must defend yourself sometimes. And when it comes to saying that I've been living with Mr. Majendie in Scarby for the last three years—"

Mrs. Majendie was so calm that Lady Cayley fancied that, after all, this was not the first time she had heard that rumour.

"Let them say it," said she. "Nobody'll believe it."

"Everybody believes it. I came to you because I was afraid you'd be the first."

"To believe it? I assure you, Lady Cayley, I should be the last."

"What was to prevent you? You didn't know me."

"No. But I know my husband."

"So do I."

"Not now" said Mrs. Majendie quietly.

Lady Cayley's bosom heaved. She had felt that she had risen to the occasion. She had achieved a really magnificent renunciation. With almost suicidal generosity, she had handed Majendie over intact, as it were, to his insufferable wife. She was wounded in several very sensitive places by the married woman's imperious denial of her part in him, by her attitude of indestructible and unique possession. If she didn't know him she would like to know who did. But up till now she had meant to spare Mrs. Majendie her knowledge of him, for she was not ill-natured. She was sorry for the poor, inept, unhappy prude.

Even now, seated in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room, she had no impulse to wound her mortally. Her instinct was rather to patronise and pity, to unfold the long result of a superior experience, to instruct this woman who was so incompetent to deal with men, who had spoiled, stupidly, her husband's life and her own. In that moment Sarah contemplated nothing more outrageous than a little straight talk with Mrs. Majendie.

"Look here, Mrs. Majendie," she said, with an air of finely ungovernable impulse, "you're a saint. You know no more about men than your little girl does. I'm not a saint, I'm a woman of the world. I think I've had a rather larger experience of men—"

Mrs. Majendie cut her short.

"I do not want to hear anything about your experience."

"Dear lady, you shan't hear anything about it. I was only going to tell you that, of all the men I've known, there's nobody I know better than your husband. My knowledge of him is probably a little different from yours."

"That I can well believe."

"You mean you think I wouldn't know a good man if I saw one? My experience isn't as bad as all that. I can tell a good woman when I see one, too. You're a good woman, Mrs. Majendie, and I've no doubt that you've been told I'm a bad one. All I can say is, that Walter Majendie was a good man when I first knew him. He was a good man when he left me and married you. So my badness can't have hurt him very much. If he's gone wrong now, it's that goodness of yours that's done it."

Anne's lips turned white, but their muscles never moved. And the woman who watched her wondered in what circumstances Mrs. Majendie would display emotion, if she did not display it now.

"What right have you to say these things to me?"

"I've a right to say a good deal more. Your husband was very fond of me. He would have married me if his friends hadn't come and bullied me to give him up for the good of his morals. I loved him—" She suggested by an adroit shrug of her shoulders that her love was a thing that Mrs. Majendie could either take for granted or ignore. She didn't expect her to understand it—"And I gave him up. I'm not a cold-blooded woman; and it was pretty hard for me. But I did it. And" (she faced her) "what was the good of it? Which of us has been the best for his morals? You or me? He lived with me two years, and he married you, and everybody said how virtuous and proper he was. Well, he's been married to you for nine years, and he's been living with another woman for the last three."

She had not meant to say it; for (in the presence of the social sanctities) you do not say these things. But flesh and blood are stronger than all the social sanctities; and flesh and blood had risen and claimed their old dominion over Sarah. The unspeakable depths in her had been stirred by her vision of the things that might have been. She was filled with a passionate hatred of the purity which had captured Majendie, and drawn him from her, and made her seem vile in his sight. She rejoiced in her power to crush it, to confront it with the proof of its own futility.

"I do not believe it," said Mrs. Majendie.

"Of course you don't believe it. You're a good woman." She shook her meditative head. "The sort of woman who can live with a man for nine years without seeing what he's like. If you'd understood your husband as well as I do, you'd have known that he couldn't run his life on your lines for six months, let alone nine years."

Mrs. Majendie's chin rose, as if she were lifting her face above the reach of the hand that had tried to strike it. Her voice throbbed on one deep monotonous note.

"I do not believe a word of what you say. And I cannot think what your motive is in saying it."

"Don't worry about my motive. It ought to be pretty clear. Let me tell you—you can bring your husband back to-morrow, and you can keep him to the end of time, if you choose, Mrs. Majendie. Or you can lose him altogether. And you will, if you go on as you're doing. If I were you, I should make up my mind whether it's good enough. I shouldn't think it was, myself."

Mrs. Majendie was silent. She tried to think of some word that would end the intolerable interview. Her lips parted to speak, but her thoughts died in her brain unborn.

She felt her face turning white under the woman's face; it hypnotised her; it held her dumb.

"Don't you worry," said Lady Cayley soothingly. "You can get your husband back from that woman to-morrow, if you choose." She smiled. "Do you see my motive now?"

Lady Cayley had not seen it; but she had seen herself for one beautiful moment as the benignant and inspired conciliator. She desired Mrs. Majendie to see her so. She had gratified her more generous instincts in giving the unfortunate lady "the straight tip." She knew, perfectly well, that Mrs. Majendie wouldn't take it. She knew, all the time, that whatever else her revelation did, it would not move Mrs. Majendie to charm her husband back. She could not say precisely what it would do. Used to live solely in the voluptuous moment, she had no sense of drama beyond the scene she played in.

"Your motive," said Mrs. Majendie, "is of no importance. No motive could excuse you."

"You think not." She rose and looked down on the motionless woman. "I've told you the truth, Mrs. Majendie, because, sooner or later, you'd have had to know it; and other people would have told you worse things that aren't true. You can take it from me that there's nothing more to tell. I've told you the worst."

"You've told me, and I do not believe it."

"You'd better believe it. But, if you really don't, you can ask your husband. Ask him where he goes to every week in that yacht of his. Ask him what's become of Maggie Forrest, the pretty work-girl who made the embroidered frock for Mrs. Ransome's little girl. Tell him you want one like it for your little girl; and see what he looks like."

Anne rose too. Her faint white face frightened Lady Cayley. She had wondered how Mrs. Majendie would look if she told her the truth about her husband. Now she knew.

"My dear lady," said she, "what on earth did you expect?"

Anne went blindly towards the chimney-piece where the bell was. Lady Cayley also turned. She meant to go, but not just yet.

"One moment, Mrs. Majendie, please, before you turn me out. I wouldn't break my heart about it, if I were you. He might have done worse things."

"He has done nothing."

"Well—not much. He has done what I've told you. But, after all, what's that?"

"Nothing to you, Lady Cayley, certainly," said Anne, as she rang the bell.

She moved slowly towards the door. Lady Cayley followed to the threshold, and laid her hand delicately on the jamb of the door as Mrs. Majendie opened it. She raised to her set face the tender eyes of a suppliant.

"Mrs. Majendie," said she, "don't be hard on poor Wallie. He's never been hard on you. He might have been." The latch sprang to under her gentle pressure. "Look at it this way. He has kept all his marriage vows—except one. You've broken all yours—except one. None of your friends will tell you that. That's why I tell you. Because I'm not a good woman, and I don't count."

She moved her hand from the door. It opened wide, and Lady Cayley walked serenely out.

She had said her say.