her, he compelled himself to tell her of
Biddy's suspicions. It seemed to him that this might force her into a
full confession of her relations with her lover. It did nothing of the
sort. She simply stood clutching a tall oak chair and looking straight
out of the window over the dark woods. Then she said: "Does Biddy
really think I am going to have a baby?" And Jocelyn nodded his head.
Then she said nothing more. She simply went out of the room like a
sleep-walker, leaving poor Jocelyn overwhelmed with misery by a silence
that he interpreted as an admission of guilt. For him, at any rate,
the matter was settled and the acuteness of Biddy Joyce finally
established.

And there one must leave it. Gabrielle herself accepted the verdict
without question, but whether from her own secret knowledge or out of
an innocence that is almost incredible but not, in her case,
impossible, I cannot say. Naturally enough, in that other strange
interview with Mrs. Payne, she did not go into details, and as far as
we are concerned the truth will never be known. Not that it really
matters. The only thing that concerns us is the effect upon her
fortunes of this real or imaginary catastrophe. All that we can say is
that when she walked out of the Roscarna dining-room after her hour
with Jocelyn she was subtly and curiously changed.

From that moment she became, in fact, a person hypnotised, possessed by
the contemplation of her approaching motherhood. She was no longer
restless or tearful. She began to sleep again, and her sleep was no
longer troubled by that recurrent dream. A strange calm descended on
her, the calm of a Madonna thrilled by an angelic annunciation--a
hallucinated calm that made her remote and independent, utterly unmoved
by the commotion into which the household of Roscarna had been thrown.

Her acceptance of the situation crumpled up Jocelyn entirely. He could
not for a moment see any way out of the difficulty. As usual he fell
back on Biddy, who brought her practical knowledge to his rescue.
Biddy was emphatic. In the circumstances there was only one thing to
be done. Gabrielle must be married--somehow--anyhow--and the sooner
the better. It was the sort of thing that happened every day of the
week and the resources of civilisation had never been able to find
another solution. Jocelyn shook his head. It was all very well to
talk about marriage, but where, in the neighbourhood, could a
bridegroom be