t eyes is averted, or Lessie might be roused to fresh
resentment by the tenderness of pity that is dawning in Lynette's.

"You have suffered cruelly, Lady Beauvayse; but I was not knowingly or
wilfully to blame. Please try to believe it!"

Lessie blows her small nose with a toot of incredulity, and says through
an intervening wad of damp lace-edged cambric:

"Go on!"

"I met Lord Beauvayse out at Gueldersdorp." The voice that comes from
Lynette's pale lips is singularly level and quiet. "He was very handsome
and very brave; he was an officer of the Colonel's Staff. He asked me to
marry him, and I--I believed him honourable and true, and I said, 'Yes.'
... That was one Sunday, when we were sitting by the river. On Thursday he
was killed, and later--nearly a year after my marriage to Dr. Saxham--I
found out the truth."

Lessie shrugs her pretty shoulders, but the face and voice of the speaker
have brought conviction. She realises that if she has been injured, her
rival has suffered equal wrong.

"You were pretty quick in taking on another man, it strikes me. But that's
not my business. You say you found out?" She shows her admirably preserved
teeth in a little grin of sardonic contempt--"nearly a year after your
marriage. Don't tell me your husband let you go on burning joss-sticks to
Beau's angelic memory when he might have made you spit on it by telling
you the truth!"

Lynette's lip curls, and she lifts her little head proudly.

"He never once hinted at the truth. Nor was it through him I learned it!"

"Ought to be kept under glass, then," comments Lessie, "as a model
husband. Now, my poor----"

Lynette interrupts, with angry emphasis:

"I will not hear Dr. Saxham mentioned in the same breath with Lord
Beauvayse!"

"He's dead--let him be!" Beau's widow snarls, her mouth twisting. Yet in
the same breath, with another of the mental pirouettes characteristic of
her class and type, she adds: "Do you suppose I don't know my own husband?
Take him one way with another, you might have sifted the world for liars,
and never found the equal of Beau."

She gathers up the red umbrella and the jewelled card-case with reviving
briskness, and shakes out her crumpled chiffons in the bright hot sun.

"Me and Baby are leaving to-morrow. I don't suppose we're likely ever to
come across you again. Good-bye! I forgive you for pitying me," she says
frankly, holding out the plump, over-jewelled hand. "As for the other
grudge.