The Carleighs went to Madeira for their honeymoon. It is a popular place for honeymoons; but not so popular as some others, because it's farther away.

No one knew but they, and they hoped that the mater wouldn't find out. They didn't in the least see how she was to find out.

Rosamond went so far as to write her a letter, omitting all mention of her wedding, of course, dating it from San Remo, and sending it there under cover to a confidential friend, to be mailed to "dear mama," who, it so happened, was still in Dublin.

Having thus taken every precaution to guard against pursuit, they threw care to the winds and reveled in their new and blissful companionship, amid tropical surroundings.

Everything amused them—the natives, the bullock-sledges, the rÊdes—hammocks swung on poles and carried by native bearers.

They explored the long ravine, visible from the windows of their rooms in the hotel at Funchal, riding on the backs of gaily-harnessed mules and sampling the wines of the vineyards along the way.

Of evenings there were always the botanical gardens, with their palms and rhododendrons, and the light-hearted Madeirans making a fiesta of the hour.

There had been two weeks of it now—rapturous weeks—with Mrs. Veynol so far from their thoughts that even momentary memories had ceased to obtrude.

They sat in the half light of the gardens, a giant palm nodding above them, a soft breeze in their faces, lovers of another land—but still lovers like themselves—sauntering by, the men swinging malacca-sticks, the women's bright eyes shining beneath becomingly arranged mantillas, and believed paradise their very own.

And that was the moment that Fate chose for dropping a shadow. It descended while their heads were turned the other way, and their first warning was when a voice they both knew and recognized instantly fell like the knell of doom on their joy-attuned ears.

"Aren't you going to kiss mother, son?"

Carleigh seemed propelled to his feet. It appeared to him that he came up with a whirling motion. If he could only have gone on whirling and rising, like certain cardboard toys he remembered to have seen, it would have been such a satisfaction.

But, instead, he seemed to whirl straight into his mother-in-law's open arms, which closed affectionately—oh, so affectionately!—around him. And it wasn't at all a nice kiss she gave him or he gave her.

There was nothing maternal about it. It was so ardent that he felt ashamed, and when he was at length released and caught sight of Rosamond's eyes he was more ashamed than ever. He couldn't understand himself.

He didn't love Sibylla Veynol. He was sure he didn't. He would have been delighted never to see her again. And he did love her daughter. Yet this was the way it had been before.

Then their kisses had been in secret. Now that she had the right she chose to demand them openly. Heretofore she had told her daughter things. Now she meant to show her.

"I don't know whether to kiss you, Rosamond, or not," she said. "That letter you sent me from San Remo was a very low piece of work."

"But, mama—" began Lady Carleigh, and got no farther.

"What must the world think," her mother went on, "when it learns that you are married and that I was not bidden to your wedding?"

"Why, mama—" the bride attempted once more.

"I don't blame Caryll in the least," mama continued. "I am sure that he had nothing to do with it. He would have been only too glad to have me there. It was you, my ungrateful daughter—my own flesh and blood—who was at the bottom of it all."

"Oh, I say—" It was Carleigh who made the attempt this time.

"No, you needn't speak," Mrs. Veynol checked him. "You are a gentleman and wish to take the blame on your own shoulders; but, no matter what you said, I shouldn't believe you. Fortunately, I know my own daughter at last."

"It—it was the only way," Rosamond faltered.

"It was a very wicked way. Still, I don't see how I am to blame you. Caryll is so fascinating it is all I can do to resist him myself. But—oh, dear, I had quite forgotten!"

She turned abruptly to where a fair-haired young man, slightly round-shouldered, stood hat in hand behind her. "Let me present Mr. Miles O'Connor, Lady Carleigh—Sir Caryll Carleigh."

Rosamond inclined her head, and Carleigh bowed a little stiffly. Mr. Miles O'Connor withdrew a tentatively advanced hand.

"Mr. O'Connor," explained Mrs. Veynol, "is the sub-editor of British Society. It was through him that I located you. How he managed it I don't know. I am curious myself; but he tells me it is an office secret, which is equivalent to a secret of the confessional."

Neither Sir Caryll nor his wife spoke. Both would have liked to cut out the tongue that had betrayed them.

"Mr. O'Connor came with me from London. He has been most kind and considerate. I can never hope to repay him."

"Has British Society ceased publication?" asked Carleigh bitingly.

"It's a little vacation I'm taking," ventured the sub-editor.

"Sorry you delayed it so long," rejoined the baronet, still more acidly.

"We were fortunate enough to secure rooms on the same corridor with you at your hotel," Mrs. Veynol disclosed.

"Mr. O'Connor again, I assume," said Carleigh. "As capable a courier as an editor—I mean as a sub-editor."

"Sir Caryll is pleased to be ironical," snapped the young Irishman, boiling.

"I'm not pleased at all," Sir Caryll replied equivocally. "Ordinarily I am most complacent, but I can't bear a sneaking, snooting busybody who's always attending to every one's business but his own."

O'Connor's fists doubled, but Mrs. Veynol laid a quieting hand on his curving shoulder.

"Caryll, dear," she soothed, "you are unjust. You are, really. Mr. O'Connor has served me at great personal sacrifice. I don't know what I should have done without him. When I learned that Rosamond was not at San Remo—had never been there—I was torn with anxiety. Fancy the feelings of a fond mother! I applied to Mr. O'Connor in my extremity, and he proved himself a friend in need."

Carleigh turned away, but no less vexed. In his wife's eyes he saw tears glistening. And they had been so inexpressibly happy.

He was tempted to allude to British Society's theory of why his engagement had been broken—to inquire about the convict first husband—his Rosamond's own father—but he resisted the impulse, determining, nevertheless, to thresh out the matter with Mrs. Veynol privately at the first opportunity.

But there was no opportunity that evening. He managed it, however, the following morning. He was astir early, leaving Rosamond, who had been wakeful from nervousness, to get some compensating slumber.

And he met his mother-in-law, as if by prearrangement, in the hotel gardens while the dew was still on leaf and flower. To his delight she was unattended.

"You grow younger every time I see you," he said, kissing her hand in the Continental fashion he knew she liked. "You might be Rosa's sister."

It was odd how against his will such pretty speeches were wrung from him by this woman who in one way repelled him.

They strolled about for a while, and then sat down on a bench, which Carleigh did not observe was in full view from his wife's windows. But it was.

"Couldn't you have come here alone, mater?" he asked. It was the first time he had called her that, and it didn't please her. He saw it before she spoke.

"For Heaven's sake, Caryll dear, don't!" she begged. "You make me feel a hundred. If you can't find a pet name for me you may call me Sibylla, or Sibyl, or just Sib. But I'll hate you if you mater me. And I don't want to hate you. I don't really."

"No more than I wish to hate you," he laughed. "But I will unless you send that Irish bounder about his business. Fancy you fetching a cad like that, Sibyl—dear!"

"But I didn't," she protested. "It was he who fetched me. He would find Rosamond for me on no other terms. We came by train to Lisbon, you know. And he never mentioned Funchal until we were on the steamer."

"He's even more of a cad than I thought then."

"He's in love with me," Sibylla said.

"And you have encouraged him. Good Lord!"

"For a purpose. Purely for a purpose."

"And after what he did—after that vile screed he published."

She colored softly. "Then you saw it?" she asked.

"It was sent to me in Scotland. Of course I knew it wasn't true. I was tempted to horsewhip the beggar."

"But it was true," she declared boldly. "That was the worst of it."

And at that Carleigh sat suddenly upright, whereas he had been lounging. "I never knew it. I never threw Rosamond over for it. You know that."

"That was its only inaccuracy. The prison part was quite true. Your wife's father is still serving his sentence in the United States Federal Prison at Atlanta, Georgia."

"And you never told me! She never told me!" he cried reproachfully.

"It was a secret we thought buried. Why should we have dug it up?"

"Because I was marrying into the family. I was entitled to—"

"I had no intention of permitting you to marry into the family. You must grant I did all in my power to stop it. I even resorted to attracting you myself. I felt sure that my daughter would never marry a man who flirted with her mother. It was shameful perhaps, but I could not afford to be too discriminating."

"You had far better have told me," he protested.

"You mean that if you had known you would not have married?"

"No. I am not sure. But I should have had the chance to consider. Now it is too late."

Mrs. Veynol laughed ringingly.

"Not at all," she denied. "Marriage is the least irrevocable of steps. Give my daughter the grounds and I promise you she will divorce you."

"I have messed things up," mused Carleigh dismally.

"You see, I've lost neither time nor effort to let you know," said Mrs. Veynol. "As a gentleman, though, you will preserve my confidence. As a son-in-law I have told you what I could not even as a futur."

"But the whole world knows it," he retorted. "It has been published."

"And it has been denied—retracted with an apology—a very abject apology. Mr. O'Connor did it. He was most kind."

Carleigh fell to musing again. Finally he said: "What was your first husband's name?"

"The same as always," she answered, smiling at his past tense. "He hasn't changed it. It was only I that changed mine and Rosamond's. His name is Ramsay—J. Sprague Ramsay."

"You divorced him before or after he went to prison?" Caryll asked.

"I divorced him when he went to prison," was her precise answer. "Then I took back my maiden name, called my daughter Rosamond instead of Jane—she had been christened Jane Rosamond—and deserted the world that knew us for Cape Town, where I met Mr. Veynol and married him."

"You are an ambitious woman, Sibyl," observed her son-in-law thoughtfully.

"Yes, I am," she admitted candidly. "And, you see, my ambition runs higher than a mere baronet. Let the girl divorce you, and I'll marry her to an earl."

"But I'm not going to let the girl divorce me." He had reached a decision. "I love her too much, and—" His eyes dwelt appraisingly for a moment on the woman beside him. In her dark, Spanish, almost gipsy way, she held a lure that for the susceptible Carleigh was well-nigh irresistible. "And," he added, "her mother is far too fascinating."

Mrs. Veynol laughed, but his flattery was not lost. "Kiss mother, son," she commanded and leaned toward him.

He glanced furtively from right to left. Not a soul was in sight. Then he took her in his arms and pressed her close, and the kiss was that of the night over again. If anything it was warmer.

The sub-editor left Madeira by the next calling steamer, liberally remunerated for his services.

Relieved of his presence, the Carleighs and Mrs. Veynol stayed on. They stayed for another fortnight. Then they traveled to Nice, arriving a little in advance of the season.

No one of them, however, was quite happy. The serpent had entered paradise, and its sweetest fruits had turned acrid.

In these days Sir Caryll talked more with his mother-in-law than he did with his wife. Her experience was wider, and she had more imagination.

Occasionally there were revelations that were like sudden drops into icy waters. For instance, one day when they had gone to Monte Carlo together, leaving Rosamond at Nice with a headache or some other ill, she surprised him by saying:

"It's odd Nina Darling never told you of us."

"You mean she knew?" he asked in astonishment.

"I'm not sure. We've never met—since. But we were great friends five years ago in Simla."

"It isn't possible she knows?" said Carleigh.

"I wouldn't be certain," said the whilom Mrs. Ramsay. "She can keep a secret. None better. You know, there's no doubt she shot poor Darling. They were alone in the gun-room together, and he couldn't have done it himself."

"I'll never believe that," he returned.

"Then you'll never believe the truth."

"But why? What was her object?"

"She wanted him out of the way to marry Lord Kneedrock, who was supposed to be dead, but was only buried for eight years in the South Seas."

"Nonsense!" said Carleigh. "She doesn't love Kneedrock. Never did. I've seen them together. I've heard them both talk, and I know."

"I told you she could keep a secret," said Sibylla Veynol.

They returned to Nice before dinner, and Carleigh found his wife reading.

"Feeling more fit?" he asked.

"I shall never feel more fit," she answered without looking up from her book.

"You don't mean it's incurable? Have you had in the physician?"

"Oh, it's not physical," she replied petulantly. "It's mental. It's the conditions. I'm sick of everything. You don't care in the least for me any more. You haven't since mama came back. You had an assignation with her in the gardens of the hotel at Funchal the very next morning, and you kissed her there under my window. I saw you."

The thing took him so by surprise that he couldn't muster a single word for defense.

"I do wish you'd leave me," she went on. "Why don't you ask mama to bolt with you? I'm sure she would, and then I'd be rid of you both."

He nearly reeled under the shock of that speech. It held him still mute. It was painfully plain that something was wrong in a social fabric which made it possible for a wife to say such a thing—a young and pretty wife, too. And to say it without seeming to find it very heinous.

He noticed that she yawned and went on reading her book.

When he fully sensed it all, hours later, alone on the promenade, he decided to go off. But not with "mama."