raging
conflagration in her being. She had lost a happy married life with
Windebank, to be as she now was, entirely owing to the Devitts. Now it
was all plain enough--so plain that she wondered how she had not seen
it before. It was the selfish action of the Devitts, who wished to
secure Windebank for their daughter, which had prevented Montague from
giving Mavis the message that Windebank had given to him. It was the
Devitts who had not taken her into their house, because they feared how
she might meet Windebank in Melkbridge. It was the Devitts who had
given her work in a boot factory, which resulted in her meeting with
Perigal. It was the Devitts, in the person of Victoria, who had
prevented Perigal from keeping his many times repeated promises to
marry Mavis. The Devitts had blighted her life. Black hate filled her
heart, overflowed and poisoned her being. She hungered to be revenged
on these Devitts, to repay them with heavy interest for the irreparable
injury to her life for which she believed them responsible. Then, she
remembered how tenderly Montague Devitt had always spoken of his
invalid boy Harold; a soft light had come into his eyes on the few
occasions on which Mavis had asked after him. A sudden resolution
possessed her, to be immediately weakened by re-collections of
Montague's affection for his son. Then a procession of the events in
her life, which were for ever seared into her memory, passed before her
mind's eye--the terror that possessed her when she learned that she was
to be a mother; her interview with Perigal at Dippenham; her first
night in London, when she had awakened in the room in the Euston Road;
Mrs Gowler's; her days of starvation in Halverton Street; the death and
burial, not only of her boy, but of her love for and faith in
Perigal--all were remembered. Mavis's mind was made up. She went to her
bedroom, where, with infinite deliberation, she dressed for going out.

"Mr Harold Devitt!" she said, when she came upon him waiting on his
tricycle by the foolish little monument raised to the memory of one of
Alfred the Great's victories over invading Danes.

The man raised his hat, while he looked intently at Mavis.

"I have to thank you for almost the dearest treasure I've ever
possessed. Do you remember Jill?"

"Of course: I wondered if it might prove to be she when I first saw
her. But is your name, by any chance, Miss Keeves?"

Mavis nodded.

"I've often wondered if I were ever goi