I've never been
so insulted in my life. Never! And never shall I forget it! And I've no
doubt that you and Sissie treated it all as a great piece of fun. You
would!"

The poor lady had gone as pale as ivory. Mr. Prohack was astonished--he
even felt hurt--that he had not seen the thing from Eve's point of view
earlier. Emphatically it did amount to an insult for Eve, to say naught
of the immense desolating disappointment to her. And yet Sissie,
princess among daughters, had not shown by a single inflection of her
voice that she had any sympathy with her mother, or any genuine
appreciation of what the secret marriage would mean to her. Youth was
incredibly cruel; and age too, in the shape of Mr. Prohack himself, had
not been much less cruel.

"Something's happened about that necklace since you left," said Eve, in
a dull, even voice.

"Oh! What?"

"I don't know. But I saw Mr. Crewd the detective drive up to the house
at a great pace. Then Brool came and knocked here, and as I didn't care
to have to tell him that the door was locked, I kept quiet and he went
away again. Mr. Crewd went away too. I saw him drive away."

Mr. Prohack said nothing audible, but to himself he said: "She actually
choked off her curiosity about the necklace so as not to give me away!
There could never have been another woman like her in the whole history
of human self-control! She's prodigious!"

And then he wondered what could have happened in regard to the necklace.
He foresaw more trouble there. And the splendour of the morning had
faded. An appalling silence descended upon the whole house. To escape
from its sinister spell Mr. Prohack departed and sought the seclusion of
his secondary club, which he had not entered for a very long time. (He
dared not face the lively amenities of his principal club.) He
pretended, at the secondary club, that he had never ceased to frequent
the place regularly, and to that end he put on a nonchalant air; but he
was somewhat disconcerted to find, from the demeanour of his
acquaintances there, that he positively had not been missed to any
appreciable extent. He decided that the club was a dreary haunt, and
could not understand why he had never before perceived its dreariness.
The members seemed to be scarcely alive; and in particular they seemed
to have conspired together to behave and talk as though humanity
consisted of only one sex,--their own. Mr. Prohack, worried though he
was by a too acute realisatio