etimes!" said Lady Holme.

"Leo is not a good husband," Sir Donald said. "But that is not the
point. He is also a bad--friend."

"Why don't you say lover?" she almost whispered.

He grasped his knee with one hand and moved the hand rapidly to and fro.

"I must say of him to you that where his pleasure or his vanity is
concerned he is unscrupulous."

"Why say all this to a woman?"

"You mean that you know as much as I?"

"Don't you think it likely?"

"Henrietta--"

"Who is that?"

"My daughter-in-law has done everything for Leo--too much. She gets
nothing--not even gratitude. I am sorry to say he has no sense of
chivalry towards women. You know him, I daresay. But do you know him
thwarted?"

"Ah, you don't think so badly of me after all?" she said quickly.

"I--I think of you that--that--"

He stopped.

"I think that I could not bear to see the whiteness of your wings
smirched by a child of mine." he added.

"You too!" she said.

Suddenly tears started into her eyes.

"Another believer in the angel!" she thought.

"May I come in?"

It was Mr. Bry's cold voice. His discontented, sleek face was peeping
round the door.

Sir Donald got up to go.

As Lady Holme drove away from Covent Garden that night she was haunted
by a feverish, embittering thought:

"Will everyone notice it but Fritz?"

Lord Holme indeed seemed scarcely the same man who had forbidden Carey
to come any more to his house, who had been jealous of Robin Pierce, who
had even once said that he almost wished his wife were an ugly woman.
The Grand Turk nature within him, if not actually dead, was certainly
in abeyance. He was so intent on his own affairs that he paid no heed
at all to his wife's, even when they might be said to be also his. Leo
Ulford was becoming difficult to manage, and Lord Holme still gaily
went his way. As Lady Holme thought over Sir Donald's words she felt a
crushing weight of depression sink down upon her. The brougham rolled
smoothly on through the lighted streets. She did not glance out of the
windows, or notice the passing crowds. In the silence and darkness of
her own soul she was trying not to feel, trying to think.

A longing to be incautious, to do something startling, desperate, came
to her.

It was evident that Mrs. Ulford had been complaining to Sir Donald about
his son's conduct. With whom? Lady Holme could not doubt that it was
with herself. She had read, with one glance at the fluttering pink