g him pleasure, and of a gallop with hounds fortified intensely
her feeling that she ought to go. Now that baby was so well, and Fiorsen
still not drinking, she might surely snatch this little holiday and
satisfy her conscience about the girl. Since the return from Cornwall,
she had played for him in the music-room just as of old, and she chose
the finish of a morning practice to say:

"Gustav, I want to go to Mildenham this afternoon for a week. Father's
lonely."

He was putting away his violin, but she saw his neck grow red.

"To him? No. He will steal you as he stole the baby. Let him have the
baby if he likes. Not you. No."

Gyp, who was standing by the piano, kept silence at this unexpected
outburst, but revolt blazed up in her. She never asked him anything; he
should not refuse this. He came up behind and put his arms round her.

"My Gyp, I want you here--I am lonely, too. Don't go away."

She tried to force his arms apart, but could not, and her anger grew.
She said coldly:

"There's another reason why I must go."

"No, no! No good reason--to take you from me."

"There is! The girl who is just going to have your child is staying near
Mildenham, and I want to see how she is."

He let go of her then, and recoiling against the divan, sat down. And
Gyp thought: 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to--but it serves him right.'

He muttered, in a dull voice:

"Oh, I hoped she was dead."

"Yes! For all you care, she might be. I'm going, but you needn't be
afraid that I shan't come back. I shall be back to-day week; I promise."

He looked at her fixedly.

"Yes. You don't break your promises; you will not break it." But,
suddenly, he said again: "Gyp, don't go!"

"I must."

He got up and caught her in his arms.

"Say you love me, then!"

But she could not. It was one thing to put up with embraces, quite
another to pretend that. When at last he was gone, she sat smoothing her
hair, staring before her with hard eyes, thinking: "Here--where I saw
him with that girl! What animals men are!"

Late that afternoon, she reached Mildenham. Winton met her at the
station. And on the drive up, they passed the cottage where Daphne
Wing was staying. It stood in front of a small coppice, a creepered,
plain-fronted, little brick house, with a garden still full of
sunflowers, tenanted by the old jockey, Pettance, his widowed daughter,
and her three small children. "That talkative old scoundrel," as Winton
always called hi