perhaps, Carol herself, whom Garthorne would have
wished to see just then and there, and as soon as he had made sure that
Dora Murray really was sitting within a few yards of him he began to be
haunted by ugly fears of blackmail and exposure--which showed how very
little he had learnt of Dora's character during the time that Carol had
shared the flat with her.

But Dora's thoughts were very different, for they were all of fear,
mingled with something like horror. She looked at the sweet-faced girl
sitting beside Reginald Garthorne, and thought of the ruin and
desolation that would fall upon her young life, with all its brilliant
outward promise, if she only knew what she could have told her. She
looked at her husband and wondered what all these good people--most of
whom would have given almost anything for an invitation to his
home--what these grave-faced, decorous clergy, too, would think if they
could see him as she had seen him only a few months before. There was
Sir Arthur Maxwell, too, sitting a little farther on, and beside him Sir
Godfrey and Lady Raleigh, though, of course, she did not know them, but
she guessed who they were, and close to Sir Arthur sat Sir Reginald, his
host for the time being.

The whole of the Abbey party had communicated together. What would
happen if she were to go to Sir Arthur after the service, and tell him
what Carol had told her, if he were to learn that he had been kneeling
at the altar rails beside the betrayer of his wife and the dishonourer
of his name?

When she had seen Sir Reginald rise from his seat and go with the rest
of the party across the centre transept to the chancel, she needed all
her self-control to shut her teeth and clench her hands and prevent
herself from leaving her seat and accusing him of his infamy before
clergy and congregation. She thought thankfully how good a thing it was
that Carol, with her fierce impetuosity and sense of bitter wrong, was
not there too. There was no telling what disaster might have happened,
how many lives might have been wrecked by the words which she might have
flung out at him, red-hot from her angry heart.

In her way Dora was a really religious girl, as many of her class are.
So religious, indeed, that she would not have dared to have approached
the altar herself; because she knew that for her, wedded as she was to
the pleasant careless life she led, repentance and reform were quite out
of the question.

She saw no incongrui