vestment." She waved her hand with a lordly air which made me laugh.
And she laughed, too, with obvious enjoyment. "Oh, my dear, what a
relief! I shall sleep happily to-night for the first time for weeks. I
can never tell you how wretched I've felt; so worried, and guilty, and
trapped! Honestly it will be a lesson for life. You have helped me for
the moment, but my worst punishment is to come. When he is well again,
quite strong and fit, I must tell Jacky!" Her face clouded. "He won't
say much, but his face! It will be an awful ordeal, but I suppose it
will be good for me!"

I thought--but did not say--that it would be good for him too. The
shock might teach him to be more understanding in his treatment of his
girl wife.

Soon after that I suggested paying a flying call on the General, and
Delphine assented eagerly, no doubt feeling, as I did myself, that it
would be a relief to be spared a further _tete-a-tete_. The dear old
man was delighted to see me, and was eager to hear when Charmion and I
were coming back to "Pastimes". Something in his manner, in the way his
old eyes searched my face, made me suspect that he knows.

I travelled to town alone, and arrived at the flat feeling tired and
dispirited. Bridget wanted to know if I had seen anything of her man.
She also seemed a trifle out of temper.

"Some people," she said darkly, "don't know when they are well off!"

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

A BRUTE--AND A REVELATION.

Christmas has come and gone. The little girls left us a fortnight
before, and the flat felt very quiet without them, but I busied myself
arranging for the fray. The tree was a huge success; so was the dinner
next day. Nevertheless, I shed tears on my pillow when I went to bed,
for if a solitary woman is ever justified in feeling "lone and lorn," it
is certainly at the season when everybody who possesses a family rushes
to it as a matter of course.

It was very gratifying to have made other people happy, but I had a
hungry longing to be made happy myself. By an unfortunate coincidence,
neither Kathie's greeting, nor Charmion's, nor Delphine's, arrived until
the twenty-seventh, and Aunt Eliza's turkey never arrived at all, having
presumably lost its label, and been eaten by the postman as treasure
trove. The one and only parcel from a distance came from--Mr
Maplestone! He had called the week before, and asked permission to send
evergreens from the "Hall". He said it was so