stay about with relations. Why she
took a fancy to me I can't imagine. She's so booky and artistic, and
that kind of thing, that I never understood half the time what she was
talking about. Now you're just as clever, you know, darling, but I do
understand you."

Roger's conscience made a few dim remonstrances. It asked him whether in
fact, standing on his own qualifications and advantages of quite a
different kind, he had not always felt himself triumphantly more than a
match for Chloe and her cleverness. But he paid no heed to them. He was
engaged in stroking Daphne's fingers and studying the small set face.

"Whom did she marry?" asked Daphne, putting an end to the stroking.

"A fellow in the army--Major Fairmile--a smart, popular sort of chap. He
was her father's aide-de-camp when they married--just after we did--and
they've been in India, or Egypt, ever since. They don't get on, and I
suppose she comes and quarters herself on the old Duchess--as she used
to on us."

"You seem to know all about her! Yes, I remember now, I've heard people
speak of her to you. Mrs. Fairmile--Mrs. Fairmile--yes, I remember,"
said Daphne, in a brooding voice, her cheeks becoming suddenly very red.
"Your uncle--in town--mentioned her. I didn't take any notice."

"Why should you? She doesn't matter a fig, either to you or to me!"

"It matters to me very much that these people who spoke of her--your
uncle and the others--knew what I didn't know!" cried Daphne,
passionately. She stared at Roger, strangely conscious that something
epoch-making and decisive had happened. Roger had had a secret from her
all these years--that was what had happened; and now she had discovered
it. That he _could_ have a secret from her, however, was the real
discovery. She felt a fierce resentment, and yet a kind of added respect
for him. All the time he had been the private owner of thoughts and
recollections that she had no part in, and the fact roused in her tumult
and bitterness. Nevertheless the disturbance which it produced in her
sense of property, the shock and anguish of it, brought back something
of the passion of love she had felt in the first year of their marriage.

During these three years she had more than once shown herself insanely
jealous for the merest trifles. But Roger had always laughed at her, and
she had ended by laughing at herself.

Yet all the time he had had this secret. She sat looking at him hard
with her astonishing eyes; and