can give
his wife, and you naturally want to marry somebody.'

'Oh, Lady John,' said Vida, wearily, 'there are no men listening.'

'No'--she looked round surprised--'I didn't suppose there were.'

'Then why keep up that old pretence?'

'What pret----'

'That to marry _at all costs_ is every woman's dearest ambition till the
grave closes over her. You and I _know_ it isn't true.'

'Well, but----' Her ladyship blinked, suddenly seeing daylight. 'Oh! It
was just the unexpected sight of him bringing it all back! _That_ was
what fired you this afternoon. Of course'--she made an honest attempt at
sympathetic understanding--'the memory of a thing like that can never
die--can never even be dimmed for the woman.'

'I mean her to think so.'

'Jean?'

Vida nodded.

'But it isn't so?'

Lady John was a little bewildered.

'You don't seriously believe,' said Vida, 'that a woman, with anything
else to think about, comes to the end of ten years still absorbed in a
memory of that sort?'

Lady John stared speechless a moment. 'You've got over it, then?'

'If it weren't for the papers, I shouldn't remember twice a year there
was ever such a person as Geoffrey Stonor in the world.'

'Oh, I'm _so_ glad!' said Lady John, with unconscious rapture.

Vida smiled grimly. 'Yes, I'm glad, too.'

'And if Geoffrey Stonor offered you--er--"reparation," you'd refuse it?'

'Geoffrey Stonor! For me he's simply one of the far back links in a
chain of evidence. It's certain I think a hundred times of other women's
present unhappiness to once that I remember that old unhappiness of mine
that's past. I think of the nail and chain makers of Cradley Heath, the
sweated girls of the slums; I think,' her voice fell, 'of the army of
ill-used women, whose very existence I mustn't mention----'

Lady John interrupted her hurriedly. 'Then why in heaven's name do you
let poor Jean imagine----'

Vida suddenly bent forward. 'Look--I'll trust you, Lady John. I don't
suffer from that old wrong as Jean thinks I do, but I shall coin her
sympathy into gold for a greater cause than mine.'

'I don't understand you.'

'Jean isn't old enough to be able to care as much about a principle as
about a person. But if my old half-forgotten pain can turn her
generosity into the common treasury----'

'What do you propose she shall do, poor child?'

'Use her hold over Geoffrey Stonor to make him help us.'

'To help you?'

'The man who served one woman--G