for all manner of cosmetics, for things so
outrageous, so unnecessary, that they witnessed chiefly to the shifts
she had been put to, to her anxieties and hastes, to the feverish
multiplication of pretexts and occasions. Still, they amounted but to a
few pounds and an odd shilling or two. Starker's bill did the rest.

That, the high, resplendent "cheek" of it, showed what she was capable
of; it gave him the measure of her father's "funk," for, of not one of
the items, from the three-guinea costumes (there were several of them)
down to the dozen of openwork Lisle-thread hose at two and eleven the
pair, had Ransome so much as suspected the existence. The three-guinea
costumes he could understand. It was the three nightgowns, trimmed lace,
at thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen shillings apiece, that took his breath
away, as with a vision of her purposes. Still, to him, her husband,
Starker's statement of account represented directly, with the perfection
of business precision, the cost of getting rid of her; it was so simply
and openly the cost of her outfit, of all that she had trailed with her
in her flight.

Yet, as he grasped it, he saw with that mature comprehension which was
now his, that, awful as it was, that total of twenty pounds odd
represented, perfectly, the price of peace. It was open to him to
repudiate his wife's debts, in which case she would appear in the County
Court, which, with its effect of publicity, with the things that would
be certain to come out there, was almost as bad as the Divorce Court.
Then the unfortunate tradespeople would not be paid, a result of her
conduct which was intolerable to Ranny's decency. Besides, he wanted to
be rather more than decent, to be handsome, in his squaring of accounts
with the woman whom, after all, in the beginning he had wronged. He
could even reflect with a humor surviving all calamity, that though
twenty-odd pounds was a devil of a lot to pay, his deliverance was
cheap, dirt cheap, at the money.

But that was not all. There was Granville.

He hated Granville. He could not believe how he ever could have loved
it. The fact that he was gradually becoming his own landlord only made
things worse. It gave Granville a malignant power over him, that power
which he had once or twice suspected, the power to round on him and
injure him and pay him back. He knew he was partly responsible for
Granville's degradation. He had done nothing for this property of his.
He had not