he house.

During a long ride homeward, Garth found time for much interested
speculation on the possible issue of events. The situation appeared
sufficiently incomprehensible to afford scope for dramatic
developments; and he shared to the full Quita's taste for drama,
provided always that it did not deprive him of sleep, or render him
personally uncomfortable. He shared also her magnanimous attitude
towards human shortcomings; frankly acknowledging his own, and
skilfully utilising those of other men--and women. But bad men are as
often tripped up by the unquenchable spark of good in human nature as
good men are by the equally unquenchable spark of evil; and James Garth
was not altogether devoid of the little leaven that leavens the whole
lump. There were even moments--and the present was one--when it
asserted itself to the detriment of his cool-headed schemes. Generally
speaking, a husband in the background in no way disturbed his
accommodating code of morals. But scruples, hitherto unknown, seemed
set like a hedge of defence about this girl, who was, in every respect,
so very much a woman.

For all her love of dangerous ground, her airy scorn of conventions,
she had a knack of compelling some measure of uprightness, even from so
unpromising a subject as James Garth. Thus, bone-bred gossip though he
was, his silence in respect of her astounding revelation was assured.
Her words, "I trust you, as a gentleman," had quickened that good grain
in him, which is the saving grace of us all. Also the knowledge itself
hurt him more than he could have believed. It seriously upset his
equanimity for no less than a week; not indeed to the extent of
damaging his appetite, or his sleep, but enough to make her society a
distraction more bitter than sweet; enough to drive him into dining at
the Strawberry Bank Hotel, though the cuisine of that mixed
establishment compared very unfavourably with his own.

Here he naturally met Lenox, and the meeting reawakened his consuming
curiosity; awakened also those primitive savage instincts which no
surface civilisation will ever annihilate while the world holds one
woman and two men. And how should it be accounted theft to rob a man
of that which, to all appearance, he neither possessed nor desired to
recapture?

In twenty years of philandering he had never experienced so keen a
desire for conquest; and if this inexplicable husband chose to leave
his wife in an equivocal position,