It was one o'clock when Mrs. Walbridge at last found herself alone. She was very tired, but so happy and excited that she did not want to go to bed, and after walking restlessly about the girls' room, and the drawing-room, living over again the happenings of the last few crowded hours, she went softly up two flights of stairs and opened the door of her little study.

It was many weeks since she had sat there at the old table, and the moonlight revealed a thick layer of dust over the inky blotting-paper and the cheap, china ink-stand. Noiselessly she opened the window and stood looking out at the night. She had always loved the quiet, dark hours and the mystery and purity of night had all her life made a strong appeal to her imagination. The millions of people who lay helpless and innocent in sleep; the rest from scheming and struggle; the renewal of strength; and the ebbing towards dawn of enfeebled life. The very fact that some of the great thoroughfares of London were being washed—laved she mentally called it—and purified from their accumulation of ugly unhygienic filth; all these things made night a time of beauty and romance to this writer of sentimental rubbish. It seemed, she had always thought, to make the sin-defiled old world young and innocent again for a few hours, and this night was to be an unforgettable one to her.

Guy had come back finer, and with greater promises of nobility than ever before. Grisel had finally come—been dragged—to her senses, and would worthily fulfil her womanhood with Oliver, whom Mrs. Walbridge told herself she loved nearly as much as she loved her own sons. In reality she loved the young journalist far more than even Guy, but this she did not, and never was, to know.

She went on counting her blessings. Maud's baby was lovely, and strong, and patients were really beginning, if not exactly to flock at least, to come in decent numbers to Moreton Twiss. Hermione was enjoying what to her mother seemed an almost unparalleled social success, among people innocently believed by Mrs. Walbridge to be of very high society indeed; little Jenny Wick seemed to like Paul, and if she married him he seemed to stand a very good chance of improving in every way, of becoming kinder and less selfish.

Thus, standing in the moonlight, Mrs. Walbridge thankfully reviewed the many good things in her life.

"To be sure," she thought, her face clouding, "it was very sad about Ferdie, it was a dreadful, almost tragic thing that their old life, however trying and disappointing it had been to her, should have been broken in this way. Like many other women she felt that, though her husband was a bad one he was, because he had been the lover of her youth and was the father of her children, a thing of odd pathos and even value to her. He was like," she thought, "a bit of china—a bowl or a jug—bought by her in her youth, and though she had been deceived in thinking it genuine and though it was cracked all over, she yet preferred to keep it than to lose it."

Carrying on the simile, the divorce case seemed to her like a public sale, in which all the blemishes and cracks of her poor jug would be exposed to indifferent observers.

All this she felt very sharply, but at the same time there was an immense relief that never again would Ferdie live under the same roof with her, that she would never again have to listen to his boasting, to hear his plausible, usually agreeable lies, to endure his peevish reproaches when things went wrong. Never again, she told herself with an odd little smile, need she have fried liver for breakfast. Ferdie cherished for fried liver a quite impossible ideal of tenderness and juiciness, and every Sunday morning for a quarter of a century she had come downstairs praying that the liver might be all right this time. And it never was all right. No, she would never have fried liver on her table again.

Then she thought about Paris. Paris, once Guy was out of danger, had been wonderful in its freedom from household cares, its lack of responsibility to anyone. At first she had hardly been able to believe that no one would ask her where she was going, and instantly suggest her not going there, but somewhere else. And then Cannes! One of her favourite literary devices had always been to send the heroines to the Sunny South.

She had written lavishly of the tropical heat, the incredible blueness of the quiet sea, of the wealth of flowers in that vague bepalaced land, but the reality (although the sea was not quite so blue as she had expected it to be) overwhelmed her. The best of all had been the gentle, balmy laziness that gradually wrapped her round and enveloped her, the laziness that even an occasionally sharp, dusty wind could not dispel.

Best of all she had had no duties. Not one. And she had sat on her balcony in a comfortable cane rocking-chair, by the hour. "I just sat, and sat, and sat," she thought, leaning against the window sill. "How beautiful it was." And, now that her regret about her cracked jug had been softened by time, and mitigated by the variety of new joys that had come to her, she could henceforth, in a more decorous British way, go on sitting.

Paul would, of course, continue to bully her and to nag, but if, as she hoped, little Jenny cared enough about him to marry him, he would turn his bullying and nagging attentions, in a very modified way, to her. It was, Mrs. Walbridge reflected innocently, right that a man should give up tormenting his mother once he had a wife of his own. And little red-headed Jenny could, she thought with a smile, look after herself.

As for Mrs. Crichell—once she, too, was Mrs. Ferdie, she would no doubt look after herself. It was a rather startling thought, that of two Mrs. Ferdies! "I suppose I shall be Mrs. Violet?"

The clock on the stairs struck again, and Mrs. Violet started. "Good gracious," she murmured aloud, "how dreadfully late it is."

She looked round the little room once more, recalling the hundreds of hours she had sat there grilling in summer; freezing in winter, working on her books, and then with a queer little smile she went downstairs. She told herself resolutely as she went that this was perfectly ridiculous; that she must go to bed but she didn't want to go to bed, and, moreover, she suddenly realised that she was hungry.

In her excitement she had eaten very little dinner, and after locking the front door she ran down into the kitchen. After a hurried examination of the larder, and experiencing a new and what she felt to be un-British distaste for cold mutton, she decided to scramble some eggs. Lighting the gas-ring, she broke three eggs into a yellow bowl, and began to beat them briskly with a silver fork.

The kitchen was a pleasant place, newly painted and whitewashed, and a row of highly flourishing pink and white geraniums garnished the long low window. Really, a very nice kitchen, its mistress mused happily.

When she had whipped the eggs enough, she set the table, spreading a lace teacloth on one end of it, and reaching down a plate and a cup and saucer from the rack. She was smiling now, for there was to her gentle spirit of adventure something rather romantic in this solitary, very late meal.

"I do not know," she said as she set the saucepan on the ring and dropped a big bit of butter into it, "whether it is supper or breakfast."

Then a sudden idea came to her. She set the saucepan on the table and flew to the larder, whence, after a hurried search, she brought back two large fine tomatoes. She had always been extremely fond of scrambled eggs with tomatoes, but Ferdie loathed tomatoes, and Paul had inherited his distaste for them, so she had long since renounced this innocent gluttony. Now Ferdie had gone, and Paul was asleep, and there was nothing on earth to prevent her having "Spanish eggs," as she called them. She turned the savoury mess, very much peppered and salted, out on to two slices of buttered toast, and sat down with the teapot at hand, to enjoy herself.

"I will—I will tell John about this," she reflected gaily. "He'll laugh."

She had been so busy up to this, since he had told her, that she had hardly had time to think about it, but now, as she ate, she went back over their talk together. It seemed to her very wonderful that such a man should have cared for her, and her mind was full of pathetic gratitude to him for what she did not at all realise he must often have regarded as a perfect nuisance.

Here she had been, she thought, struggling along at "Happy House" with Ferdie and the children, losing her youth, and her hopes, and her looks, and there—somewhere—anywhere—had been that fine, handsome, successful man, loving her! It was most wonderful. "I hope, though," her thoughts went on as she began on her delicious hot eggs, "that he didn't mean anything by what he said about the divorce—and his always living somewhere near—us."

She had written nearly two dozen very sentimental novels, and was an adept at happy endings, but she blushed in her solitude at the thought that Barclay might possibly be contemplating for her and him anything so indecorous as in their case it would be, as such a happy ending.

"Oh, no, I am sure he didn't—but how wonderful it would be to have him for a friend. For the boys too, with his fine character and his cleverness." Oh, yes, she was going to be very proud of him, and the fragrance of the old romance would always hang over their friendship. And then suddenly she blushed hotly, and laid down her fork.

"Violet Walbridge," she said severely, precisely as she would have made one of her own heroines in like case apostrophise herself, "you are not being honest. You know that he did mean something. You know that he will—not now, of course, but after a long, long time—ask you—to be his wife." Feeling very wicked, and very shy, she faced the question for a moment, and then took a long drink of tea—a long draught of tea her heroine would have called it—"but if he does," she decided, her eyes full of tears, "it won't be for ages, and I need not decide now. I can tell him when the time comes that—that——" as she reached this point her eyes happened to fall on a pot of white paint that was standing on a shelf in the corner. Cook, she supposed, had been painting something in the scullery and the pot had been forgotten. Her face changed.

It was very odd. She had been meaning for years to have the words "Happy House" renewed on the gate, but the irony of the name had somehow forced her into putting it off, and for a long time now she had been dating her letters just 88, Walpole Road, and not using the name at all; the romantic, foolish name, it had come to look to her now. She rose with a smile, and reached down the pot, and stood stirring the thick paint with the brush.

"Now," she thought, "it really is 'Happy House'—or it's going to be"—and she would have the words there again.

Refreshed by the tea and food, she felt less than ever inclined for bed and, laughing aloud at her own folly, she decided that she would paint the words on the gate herself.

The moon was still shining, yet it was too early for any prying eye to see her, and it would, she thought, with that novelist's imagination of hers—the thing without which not even the worst novel could possibly be written—be a romantic and splendid ending to the most wonderful day in her life.

Opening the area door softly she crept up the steps with the pot and brush in her hand, and went down the flagged path. The moon was paling and the shadows lay less distinctly on the quiet road, but the general gloom seemed greater. Not a soul was in sight; not a sound broke the sleepy stillness; not a light shone in any window. Opening the gate, and closing it again to steady it, Mrs. Walbridge, forgetting her beautiful frock, knelt down on the pavement and set to work. The poor old words, last renewed, she remembered the day Paul came of age, when Ferdie had given one of his characteristic parties, were nearly obliterated.

Very carefully the thankful little woman worked, her heart singing. Darling Grisel, how happy she had looked when she left her lying in bed, the big ruby gone from her finger, and the little old emerald bought in Paris for Miss Perkins, in its place. It was really wonderful how well everything was turning out! Paul and Jenny had certainly advanced a good deal in their friendship during her absence. Jenny must marry him, oh dear, and Mrs. Crichell must marry Ferdie, too. John, dear, wise romantic John thought she would, and, after all, she thought, as her brush worked, poor Ferdie had lots of good qualities really, and she, Violet, had always been too dull, too staid for him.

"Clara Crichell liked entertaining, and really has great talents as a hostess and I always was dreadful at parties." She dipped the brush in again and began on the "y." "He is one of those people for whom success is really good," she went on; "who knows but that he may turn out very well as the husband of a rich woman, poor Ferdie——"

"Violet!" She started and ruined the "H" in "House." Poor Ferdie stood before her.

"Ferdie, is it you?" she cried stupidly, still kneeling.

"Yes, of course it is me," he snapped crossly. "What on earth are you doing out here in the middle of the night?"

Scrambling to her feet she answered anxiously, "I—I am just painting. But why are you here?"

"Let's go into the house and I will tell you," he said. "I have come home, Violet!"

Half an hour later Ferdinand Walbridge sat in the kitchen of "Happy House," drinking tea and eating scrambled eggs—without tomatoes. He had on a velvet jacket of Paul's, for he was cold, and the glass out of which he had drunk a stiff brandy and soda still stood on the table. Beside him sat his wife, her face full of troubled sympathy.

"Enough salt?" she asked presently.

He nodded. "The food at the Rosewarne is beastly, it has played the very deuce with my digestion——"

"Did you have hot water every morning?"

"No, it was luke warm half the time and made me feel sick."

He went on eating in silence, and she studied his face. That he should look ill, and unhappy, did not, after what he had told her, surprise her much; what did strike her was his look of age. She had often seen him when he was ill, but this was the first time that his face not only showed his real age, but looked actually older. The lines in it seemed deeper, and his eyes, under heavy suddenly wrinkled lids, lustreless and watery. He had cried a good deal of course, she reflected pitifully, but never before had his easy tears made his eyes look like that.

"I do think," he murmured resentfully, "that you might have remembered that I like China tea."

"I did remember, Ferdie, but there is not any in the house. You know all the rest of us prefer Ceylon."

He grunted and went on eating. "Poor china jug," she thought, "his cracks were very apparent now."

"Oh, Ferdie," she broke out, "I am really awfully sorry for you."

He looked up, his haggard face a little softened.

"Yes, I believe you really are, Violet, and I can tell you one thing, Clara wouldn't be if she was in your shoes."

She didn't answer, for she really did not know what to say about Clara—Clara, who had behaved so cruelly to poor Ferdie.

"She is a woman," he burst out, "with no heart, absolutely none."

"Perhaps she—perhaps she is sorry for Mr. Crichell," she suggested timidly.

He laughed. "Sorry? Not she. I tell you it is the legacy that has done it. The legacy. She always could twist Crichell around her little finger, and the very minute she heard the news, off she went to him and made up. You mark my words, the greater part of that legacy will be hanging round her neck before very long."

"But, Ferdie, she can't be as bad as that. No woman could. People often make mistakes, you know, and she may have found that—that—after all, her heart was really his."

He rose and stared at her rudely. "Like one of the awful women in your novels! I tell you, it was the legacy that did it. Perfectly revolting, because, after all," he added with an odious, fatuous laugh, "all other things being equal, it's me she loves. Why, I never saw a woman——" he broke off, seeming to realise suddenly the bad taste of his attitude. "But that's not the point," he went on, nervously—"the point is this——"

She drew a long breath and clenched her hands in her lap to fortify herself for the coming scene. Nothing, she knew, not even the real suffering he had been through, could induce Ferdie to forego a dramatic scene.

"Hum," he cleared his throat violently and Mrs. Walbridge, instinctively true to her wifely duty, answered:

"Yes, Ferdinand?"

"Well," he made a little gesture with his handsome hand, which struck her as being not quite so clean as usual. "I have done wrong, and—I beg your pardon." His voice was sonorous and most musical, and as he finished speaking he dropped his head on his breast in a kind of splendid compromise between the attitude of shame and a court bow.

"I—I forgive you, Ferdie, of course, I forgive you," but she knew that he had not yet got his money's worth out of the situation.

"Violet," he began again—and then as if for the first time, he looked at her, not as a refuge, or a feather-bed, or a soothing draught, but as a woman. "Why, what——" he stammered, staring, "what have you been doing with yourself? You look—different somehow. You look years younger, and—and where did you get that gown?" To her dismay he ended on a sharp note of suspicion.

"I bought it in Paris," she answered quietly.

"Bought it? Why, it is worth twenty guineas, if it's worth a penny! Violet, I—I hope you have not been—forgetting that you are my wife, while I have been away?"

She nearly laughed, he was so ridiculous, but her deep eyes filled with tears over the pathos of it.

"Listen, Ferdie," she said gently, "you need not worry about me. I am an old woman now and I have always been a good woman. I bought this dress, and several others, in Paris, with money that I got as a prize for a book."

He stared at her stupidly with his blood-shot eyes.

"Yes, a book you have probably read. It's called 'Bess Knighthood.'"

"You—you didn't write 'Bess Knighthood!'"

"Yes, I did. After 'Lord Effingham' was such a failure, I just—just sat down and wrote 'Bess Knighthood.' I don't know how I did it—it went so fast I could hardly remember it, when it was done." A wan smile stirred her lips, which seemed to have lost their recent fullness and looked flat and faded, "but I got the prize."

"Oh." He looked annoyed, and she realised at once that he felt injured, for it had always given him a pleasant feeling of superiority to laugh at her looks, and now he could laugh no more.

"Yes," she resumed, drawing herself up a little in her pride, "and I have not spent very much—I have got nearly five hundred pounds left, so if you need some, Ferdie——"

The early day was by now coming in over the geraniums, and in its wan light, each of them thought how ruinous the other looked.

Walbridge gazed at his wife. "You are fagged out," he said pompously. "It is very late, I think we had better go upstairs," and without a word she followed him up into the hall.

"One of your old pyjama suits is in the dressing-room chest-of-drawers," she said, as he went on up the front stairs, leaning heavily on the handrail. "I—I have one or two things to do, Ferdie."

He turned, looking down, dominating her even now in her miserable triumph.

"All right," he said, "I—I will sleep in the dressing-room. Don't be long, Violet," and Ferdinand Walbridge went to bed.

Mrs. Walbridge took up the pot of paint and the sprawling brush from where they were lying on the pavement and looked at the words on the gate. "Happy" stood out neatly, but the "H" in "House" was obliterated by a great splash, and the remaining letters, untouched by the fresh paint, looked by contrast more faded and faint than ever.

"Dear me," she thought, "what a mess." And then, because she was a tidy woman, as well as to avoid questions and conjectures, she rubbed off the smear of paint as well as she could with one of the new Paris handkerchiefs, and resumed her interrupted task.

In a few moments her work was done, and the words she had chosen for the new house thirty years ago showed out once more distinctly on the green gate. She rose to her knees, too tired for thought, sensible only of a violent longing for sleep; to-morrow, she knew, she must think. She must think about the turn things were taking; about the coming back of her husband, and the resumption of the old daily routine; of Ferdie's fretfulness, of liver for breakfast, and, most of all, she must think about Sir John Barclay.

"Poor John," she thought, giving a last look at the words on the gate, "and poor Ferdie. Oh, how tired I am——" she went into the house and shut the door.