d she felt that he was thinking not only of the lost years, but of the
possible gulf before him--that horror of darkness and disgrace which
they might yet have to face.

She went downstairs to the cab that was waiting, with a new and subduing
sensation very present to her mind: a sense of something missed out of
her own life, a sense of having failed in the duty that had once been
given her to do. Hitherto she had been buoyed up by a certain confidence
in her own conscientiousness and power of judgment, as most rather
narrow-minded women are; but it now occurred to her that she might have
been wrong--not only in a few details, as she had consented to
admit--but wrong from beginning to end. She had marred not only her own
life but the lives of her husband and her child.

This consciousness kept her very quiet during the drive to Macclesfield
Buildings. But nobody spoke much, except Doctor Sophy, who made
interjectional remarks, half lost in the rattling of the cab, by way of
trying to keep up everybody's spirits. Caspar sitting opposite his wife,
with his arms folded and his long legs carefully tucked out of the way,
had an unusually serious and even anxious expression. Indeed it struck
Lady Alice for the first time that he was looking haggard and ill. The
burden was weighing upon him even more than he knew. Maurice, too,
seemed absorbed in thought, so that the drive was not a particularly
lively one.

They got out at the block of buildings which had once struck Lesley as
so particularly ugly. Perhaps their ugliness did not impress Lady Alice
so much. At any rate she made no remark upon it. Her fingers were
lightly pressed upon Caspar's arm: her thoughts were occupied by him.

At the door of the block in which the club-rooms were situated, a little
group of men were standing in somewhat aimless fashion, smoking and
talking among themselves. Caspar recognized several of the club members
in this group. "Ah," he said quietly to his wife, "they thought that I
should not come." She made no answer: as a matter of fact she began to
feel a trifle frightened. These rough-looking men, with their pipes, who
nudged each other and laughed as she passed, were of a kind unknown to
her. But Caspar walked through them easily, nodding here and there, with
a cheery "Good-afternoon."

Lady Alice did not know it, but the room presented an unusual sight to
her husband's eyes that afternoon. The fire was burning, and the gas was
lighted,