had never yet experienced. But that, too, was almost a
relief. I think she would really have welcomed it if he could have come
across the love of his life. It would have given her a rest.

And there could not have been anyone better than poor little Mrs Maidan;
she was so ill she could not want to be taken on expensive jaunts....
It was Leonora herself who paid Maisie's expenses to Nauheim. She handed
over the money to the boy husband, for Maisie would never have allowed
it; but the husband was in agonies of fear. Poor devil!

I fancy that, on the voyage from India, Leonora was as happy as ever she
had been in her life. Edward was wrapped up, completely, in his girl--he
was almost like a father with a child, trotting about with rugs and
physic and things, from deck to deck. He behaved, however, with great
circumspection, so that nothing leaked through to the other passengers.
And Leonora had almost attained to the attitude of a mother towards Mrs
Maidan. So it had looked very well--the benevolent, wealthy couple of
good people, acting as saviours to the poor, dark-eyed, dying young
thing. And that attitude of Leonora's towards Mrs Maidan no doubt partly
accounted for the smack in the face. She was hitting a naughty child who
had been stealing chocolates at an inopportune moment. It was certainly
an inopportune moment. For, with the opening of that blackmailing letter
from that injured brother officer, all the old terrors had redescended
upon Leonora. Her road had again seemed to stretch out endless; she
imagined that there might be hundreds and hundreds of such things
that Edward was concealing from her--that they might necessitate more
mortgagings, more pawnings of bracelets, more and always more horrors.
She had spent an excruciating afternoon. The matter was one of a divorce
case, of course, and she wanted to avoid publicity as much as Edward
did, so that she saw the necessity of continuing the payments. And she
did not so much mind that. They could find three hundred a year. But it
was the horror of there being more such obligations.

She had had no conversation with Edward for many years--none that went
beyond the mere arrangements for taking trains or engaging servants. But
that afternoon she had to let him have it. And he had been just the same
as ever. It was like opening a book after a decade to find the words the
same. He had the same motives. He had not wished to tell her about the
case because he had not wi