his address was answered, after a week, from a place I never heard
of--Arromanches, in Normandy. The shortest and rudest letter I ever had
from him. Practically he told me to mind my own business. And there
things stand.'

Rhoda smiled a little, conscious of the extreme curiosity her friend
must be feeling, and determined not to gratify it. For by this time,
though her sunken cheeks were hard to reconcile with the enjoyment of a
summer holiday, she had matured a resolve to betray nothing of what she
had gone through. Her state of mind resembled that of the ascetic who
has arrived at a morbid delight in self-torture. She regarded the world
with an intense bitterness, and persuaded herself not only that the
thought of Everard Barfoot was hateful to her soul, but that sexual
love had become, and would ever be, to her an impure idea, a vice of
blood.

'I suppose,' she said carelessly, 'Mr. Widdowson will try to divorce
his wife.'

'I am in dread of that. But they may have made it up.'

'Of course you have no doubt of her guilt?'

Mary tried to understand the hard, austere face, with its touch of
cynicism. Conjecture as to its meaning was not difficult, but, in the
utter absence of information, certainty there could be none. Under any
circumstances, it was to be expected that Rhoda would think and speak
of Mrs. Widdowson no less severely than of the errant Bella Royston.

'I have _some_ doubt,' was Miss Barfoot's answer. 'But I should be glad
of some one else's favourable opinion to help my charity.'

'Miss Madden hasn't been here, you see. She certainly would have come
if she had felt convinced that her sister was wronged.'

'Unless a day or two saw the end of the trouble--when naturally none of
them would say any more about it.'

This was the possibility which occupied Rhoda's reflections as long as
she lay awake that night.

Her feelings on entering the familiar bedroom were very strange. Even
before starting for her holiday she had bidden it good-bye, and at
Seascale, that night following upon the "perfect day," she had thought
of it as a part of her past life, a place abandoned for ever, already
infinitely remote. Her first sensation when she looked upon the white
bed was one of disgust; she thought it would be impossible to use this
room henceforth, and that she must ask Miss Barfoot to let her change
to another. Tonight she did not restore any of the ornaments which were
lying packed up. The scent of the