ms in the looking-glass made Sue's manner
bright, till she reflected what a meanly sexual emotion this was in
her, and hated herself for it.

"I've just looked in to see if you got back comfortably last night,
that's all," she said gently. "I was afraid afterwards that you
might have met with any mishap?"

"Oh--how stupid this is! I thought my visitor was--your friend--your
husband--Mrs. Fawley, as I suppose you call yourself?" said Arabella,
flinging her head back upon the pillows with a disappointed toss, and
ceasing to retain the dimple she had just taken the trouble to
produce.

"Indeed I don't," said Sue.

"Oh, I thought you might have, even if he's not really yours.
Decency is decency, any hour of the twenty-four."

"I don't know what you mean," said Sue stiffly. "He is mine, if you
come to that!"

"He wasn't yesterday."

Sue coloured roseate, and said, "How do you know?"

"From your manner when you talked to me at the door. Well, my dear,
you've been quick about it, and I expect my visit last night helped
it on--ha-ha! But I don't want to get him away from you."

Sue looked out at the rain, and at the dirty toilet-cover, and at the
detached tail of Arabella's hair hanging on the looking-glass, just
as it had done in Jude's time; and wished she had not come. In the
pause there was a knock at the door, and the chambermaid brought in a
telegram for "Mrs. Cartlett."

Arabella opened it as she lay, and her ruffled look disappeared.

"I am much obliged to you for your anxiety about me," she said
blandly when the maid had gone; "but it is not necessary you should
feel it. My man finds he can't do without me after all, and agrees
to stand by the promise to marry again over here that he has made me
all along. See here! This is in answer to one from me." She held
out the telegram for Sue to read, but Sue did not take it. "He asks
me to come back. His little corner public in Lambeth would go to
pieces without me, he says. But he isn't going to knock me about
when he has had a drop, any more after we are spliced by English law
than before! ... As for you, I should coax Jude to take me before
the parson straight off, and have done with it, if I were in your
place. I say it as a friend, my dear."

"He's waiting to, any day," returned Sue, with frigid pride.

"Then let him, in Heaven's name. Life with a man is more
businesslike after it, and money matters work better. And then, you
see, if you