the
stout boots that sixty pounds would buy; and besides the rent there
would be the servants' wages and the food, and the railway journeys
out and home. While as for references, these did indeed seem a
stumbling-block; it did seem impossible to give any without making
their plan more public than they had intended.

They had both--even Mrs. Arbuthnot, lured for once away from
perfect candour by the realization of the great saving of trouble and
criticism an imperfect explanation would produce--they had both thought
it would be a good plan to give out, each to her own circle, their
circles being luckily distinct, that each was going to stay with a
friend who had a house in Italy. It would be true as far as it went--
Mrs. Wilkins asserted that it would be quite true, but Mrs. Arbuthnot
thought it wouldn't be quite--and it was the only way, Mrs. Wilkins
said, to keep Mellersh even approximately quiet. To spend any of her
money just on the mere getting to Italy would cause him indignation;
what he would say if he knew she was renting part of a mediaeval castle
on her own account Mrs. Wilkins preferred not to think. It would take
him days to say it all; and this although it was her very own money,
and not a penny of it had ever been his.

"But I expect," she said, "your husband is just the same. I
expect all husbands are alike in the long run."

Mrs. Arbuthnot said nothing, because her reason for not wanting
Frederick to know was the exactly opposite one--Frederick would by only
to pleased for her to go, he would not mind it in the very least;
indeed, he would hail such a manifestation of self-indulgence and
worldliness with an amusement that would hurt, and urge her to have a
good time and not to hurry home with a crushing detachment. Far
better, she thought, to be missed by Mellersh than to be sped by
Frederick. To be missed, to be needed, from whatever motive, was, she
thought, better than the complete loneliness of not being missed or
needed at all.

She therefore said nothing, and allowed Mrs. Wilkins to leap at
her conclusions unchecked. But they did, both of them, for a whole day
feel that the only thing to be done was to renounce the mediaeval
castle; and it was in arriving at this bitter decision that they really
realized how acute had been their longing for it.

Then Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose mind was trained in the finding of
ways out of difficulties, found a way out of the reference difficulty;
and sim