ised at Major Perigal's refusal to do anything for
Charles," she remarked.

"Why?" asked her husband.

"Can you ask?"

"You mean all that business with poor Mavis Keeves?"

"I mean all that business, as you call it, with that abandoned creature
whom we were so misguided as to assist."

Devitt said nothing; he was well used to his wife's emphatic views on
the subject--views which were endorsed by her sister.

"The whole thing was too distressing for words," she continued. "I'd
have broken off the marriage, even at the last moment, for Charles's
share in it, but for the terrible scandal which would have been caused."

"Well, well; it's all over and done with now," sighed Devitt.

"I'm not so sure; one never knows what an abandoned girl, as Miss
Keeves has proved herself to be, is capable of!"

"True!" remarked Miss Spraggs.

"Come! come!" said Devitt. "The poor girl was at the point of death for
weeks after her baby died."

"What of that?" asked his wife.

"Girls who suffer like that aren't so very bad."

"You take her part, as you've always done. She's hopelessly bad, and
I'm as convinced as I'm sitting here that it was she who led poor
Charlie astray."

"It's all very unfortunate," said Devitt moodily.

"And we all but had her in the house," urged Mrs Devitt, much irritated
at her husband's tacit support of the girl.

"Anyway, she's far away from us now," said Devitt.

"Where has she gone?" asked Miss Spraggs.

"Somewhere in Dorsetshire," Devitt informed her.

"If she hadn't gone, I should have made it my duty to urge her to leave
Melkbridge," remarked Mrs Devitt.

"She's not so bad as all that," declared Devitt.

"I can't understand why men stand up for loose women," said his wife.

"She's not a loose woman: far from it. If she were, Windebank would not
be so interested in her."

Devitt could not have said anything more calculated to anger the two
women.

Miss Spraggs threw down her pen, whilst Mrs Devitt became white.

"She must be bad to have fascinated Sir Archibald as she has done," she
declared.

"Windebank is no fool," urged her husband.

"I suppose the next thing we shall hear is that she's living under his
protection," cried Mrs Devitt.

"In St John's Wood," added Miss Spraggs, whose information on such
matters was thirty years behind the times.

"More likely he'll marry her," remarked Devitt.

"What!" cried the two women.

"I believe he'd give his eyes to get her," the