it. But they know."

I said, "Supposing they _do_ know--as long as other people don't--"

"But, Wally, that's just it. Everybody does know."

I couldn't take her quite seriously yet. I asked her: Was it the labels?
and she said, No, she'd picked all the foreign ones off at Dover, and she
got the Dover ones off in the cab coming home, and she'd had Heaven's own
luck at the station, nobody'd seen her on the up platform, and her people
thought she'd come from London. Of course they all asked her where she'd
been, and she told them she wasn't going to let on just yet, that it
wasn't good for them to know too much, and that if they behaved
themselves they'd know some day. She meant to tell them as soon as ever
Reggie'd gone. "Really and truly, Wally, I meant to tell them."

"And do you know," she said, "they thought I was rotting them, that I'd
been in some stuffy place in the country all the time."

"Then how on earth," I said, "did they find out?"

"They didn't. They never do find out things. They heard--last night.
Somebody saw us."

"Withers?" I said. I'd thought of Withers at once. But he didn't seem
likely. He wasn't back yet.

"No. Not Withers. Some women who knew my uncle, General Thesiger. They
were in your hotel in Bruges, and they knew some other women staying in
the _pension_. They saw my name in the visitors' book and it excited
them. It all comes, you see, of my uncle being so beastly distinguished,
so that they _had_ to say they knew him. And then of course the other
people chipped in and told them all they knew about _me_. Can't you see
them doing it?"

I could indeed.

"I never thought the _pension_ was a good scheme," she said; "but poor
Jimmy _would_ make me go to it. He said it was safe. You see how safe it
was."

I wasn't quite clear yet as to where Jevons came in.

"You say these people saw you. You mean they saw you and Jevons?"

She smiled more than ever. "No, Wally. It was _you_ they saw."

I don't know whether I was glad or sorry. I believe I was both. I was
glad that Jevons--the ugly element--was disposed of. I was sorry--sorry,
indeed, is hardly the word for what I felt--when I thought of the
impression Viola's family had of me _now_; of the terms on which I should
be received into it if I were received into it at all. I couldn't clear
myself entirely, you see, without dragging in Jevons, and for Viola's
sake Jevons had at any cost to be suppressed.

"What on earth," I said, "mus