e this
time with unconcealed irritation. "Adela, I don't go now because I know
too much about him."

There was immediate sensation.

Molly slowly lit a cigarette. Even then she did not know what she was
going to say, but she had determined on the spur of the moment, and
chiefly from sheer terror, to put Mark out of court if she possibly
could.

"He is a humbug," she proclaimed in her low, incisive tone.

"Oh! come now," said Billy. "A man who gave up
Groombridge--extraordinary silly thing to do, but he is not a humbug!"

Molly turned on him.

"Yes, he is. He knows he made a great mistake and he would undo it if he
could."

"Molly, it can't be true!" cried Adela almost tearfully. "If you had
only heard him preach last Sunday you couldn't say such hasty, unkind,
horrid things!"

"It is true," said Molly.

"Our hostess is pleased to be mysterious," said the fat man, and "you
know," turning to Mrs. Delaport Green, "it's very likely that he is
sorry he made such a sacrifice, but I don't think that prevents its
having been a noble action at the time."

"Or makes him a humbug now," said the soldier. "I believe he is an
uncommonly nice fellow."

"Oh! she means something else," said Lady Sophia, looking at Molly with
curiosity. "What is it you have against him?"

Molly felt the table to be against her, and it added to her nervous
irritability. She was not in any sense drunk, and the drugs she took
were in safe doses at present; yet she was to a certain degree
influenced both by the champagne she had just taken, and the injection
she had given herself when she came in from the theatre.

"You will none of you repeat what I am going to say?"

"I probably shall," said the big guest, "unless it is excessively
interesting; otherwise I never remember what is a secret and what
isn't."

But Molly did not heed him.

"Well," she said, "it is a fact that Father Molyneux would give up the
Roman Church to-morrow if a very intimate friend of mine, who could
give him as much wealth as he has lost, would agree to marry him after
he ceased to be a priest!"

"Oh! how dreadfully disappointing!" cried Adela.

"Why shouldn't he?" said Billy.

"It seems a come-down," said the fat man; and the soldier said nothing.

"Stuff and nonsense," said Lady Sophia firmly. "Somebody has been
humbugging you, Molly."

But being a lady who liked peace better than warfare, she now went on to
say that she had had no notion how late it was