husband is the beginning of the end. Don't deny it, Clarice, it's no
earthly use. Women like you have your own ideas of life, I suppose, and
I ought to be thankful they're no worse."

He stood by the door all the time he spoke, and his colourless face and
pale eyes never altered.

"You're talking absolute nonsense," said Mrs. Wilder, preserving an
amiable tone. "We _have_ to entertain, Draycott, and you can't round on
me for what I have done for years. It has helped you on, and you know
it."

"I wasn't talking of that," he said drearily. "I was talking of you.
You're getting old, for a woman, Clarice, and when you're worried, as
you are to-day, you show it; though how an imbecile like Hartley got at
you to the extent of making you worried, I don't pretend to guess."

"Old," she said angrily. "You aren't troubling to be particularly
polite."

"No, I'm damnably truthful; just because it makes me wonder at you all
the more. You can go on smiling at any number of idiots, because you
must have the applause, I suppose. You don't even believe in it--_now_."

His allusion was definite, and Mrs. Wilder felt about in her mind for
some way to change the conversation. Quagmires are bad ground for
walking, and she was in a hurry to reach _terra firma_ again. She came
round the table and slipped her arm through his.

"After all these years. Draycott--be a little generous."

If she had fought him, some deep, hidden anger in his cold heart would
have flared up, but her gesture softened him and he patted her hand.

"I know," he said slowly. "Only I can't quite forget. I simply can't,
Clarice."

She smiled at him and touched his face with a light hand.

"Shall I tell you why? Because even if I am old--and thirty-six isn't so
very dreadful--you are still in love with me."

She went with him to the door and smiled as he drove away, smiled and
waved as he reappeared round a distant bend, and watched him return her
signal, and then she went back into the large drawing-room and her face
grew grey and pinched, and she sat with her chin propped on her hands,
thinking.

She had proved that there are more fools in the world than those who go
about disguised as Heads of Police, and had added another specimen to
the general list, but she found no mirth in the idea as she considered
it.

X

IN WHICH CRAVEN JOICEY IS OVERCOME BY A SUDDEN INDISPOSITION, AND
HARTLEY, WITHOUT LOOKING FOR HIM, FINDS THE MAN HE WANTED

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