t was beastly of him to breed terriers, knowing
how his wife felt about dogs! She told me herself she would never have
married him if she had known there was any likelihood of that coming to
pass. She feels about dogs as some people feel about cats."

"I never heard such nonsense!"

"Nonsense?" he repeated in an enraged tone. "It isn't nonsense! The best
proof that that horror of dogs is instinctive with her is the effect that
she herself has on every dog she comes across. That was shown the evening
she was here."

"Really, Jack, that's utterly absurd! Flick was not thinking of her at
all. Something in the garden had frightened him. Your father feels sure
that it was a snake which he himself killed the next morning." And then,
for she was most painfully disturbed by this scene between herself and
Jack, she said quietly: "I'm sorry that Mrs. Crofton ever came to
Beechfield. I didn't think there was anyone in the world who would make
you speak to me as you have spoken to me now."

"I hate injustice!" he exclaimed, a little shamefacedly. "I can't think
why you've turned against her, Janet. It's so mean as well as so unkind!
She has hardly any friends in the world, and she thought by the account
Godfrey gave of us that _we_ should become her friends."

"It's always a woman's own fault if she has no friends, especially when
she's such an attractive woman as Mrs. Crofton," said Janet shortly. She
hesitated, and then added something for which she was sorry immediately
afterwards: "I happen to know rather more about Mrs. Crofton than most of
the people in Beechfield do."

She spoke with that touch of mysterious finality which is always so
irritating to a listener who is in indifferent sympathy with a speaker.

"What d'you mean?" cried Jack fiercely. "I insist on your telling me what
you mean!"

Janet Tosswill told herself with Scotch directness that she had been a
fool. But if Jack was--she hardly knew how to put it to herself--so--so
bewitched by Mrs. Crofton as he seemed to be, then perhaps, as they had
got to this point, he had better hear the truth:

"Mrs. Crofton made herself very much talked about in the neighbourhood of
the place where she and her husband settled after the War. She was so
actively unkind, and made him so wretched, that at last he committed
suicide. At least that is what is believed by everyone who knew them in
Essex."

"I suppose a woman told you all this?" he said in a dangerously calm
voice