ure: "Do you want more proofs of panic-stricken
guilt?"

"Oh, guilt--" His friend revolved her large soft muff about a drooping
hand. "There's so much still to understand."

"Your mind does not, as a rule, work so slowly!" he said with some
asperity; but she paid no heed to his tone.

"Amherst, for instance--how long has he known of this?" she continued.

"A week or two only--she made that clear."

"And what is his attitude?"

"Ah--that, I conjecture, is just what she means to keep us from
knowing!"

"You mean she's afraid----?"

Mr. Langhope gathered his haggard brows in a frown. "She's afraid, of
course--mortally--I never saw a woman more afraid. I only wonder she had
the courage to face me."

"Ah--that's it! Why _did_ she face you? To extenuate her act--to give
you her version, because she feared his might be worse? Do you gather
that that was her motive?"

It was Mr. Langhope's turn to hesitate. He furrowed the thick Turkey rug
with the point of his ebony stick, pausing once or twice to revolve it
gimlet-like in a gap of the pile.

"Not her avowed motive, naturally."

"Well--at least, then, let me have that."

"Her avowed motive? Oh, she'd prepared one, of course--trust her to
have a dozen ready! The one she produced was--simply the desire to
protect her husband."

"Her husband? Does _he_ too need protection?"

"My God, if he takes her side----! At any rate, her fear seemed to be
that what she had done might ruin him; might cause him to feel--as well
he may!--that the mere fact of being her husband makes his situation as
Cicely's step-father, as my son-in-law, intolerable. And she came to
clear him, as it were--to find out, in short, on what terms I should be
willing to continue my present relations with him as though this hideous
thing had not been known to me."

Mrs. Ansell raised her head quickly. "Well--and what were your terms?"

He hesitated. "She spared me the pain of proposing any--I had only to
accept hers."

"Hers?"

"That she should disappear altogether from my sight--and from the
child's, naturally. Good heaven, I should like to include Amherst in
that! But I'm tied hand and foot, as you see, by Cicely's interests; and
I'm bound to say she exonerated him completely--completely!"

Mrs. Ansell was again silent, but a swift flight of thoughts traversed
her drooping face. "But if you are to remain on the old terms with her
husband, how is she to disappear out of your life without a