shed her to sully her mind with the idea
that there was such a thing as a brother officer who could be a
blackmailer--and he had wanted to protect the credit of his old light
of love. That lady was certainly not concerned with her husband. And he
swore, and swore, and swore, that there was nothing else in the world
against him. She did not believe him.

He had done it once too often--and she was wrong for the first time, so
that he acted a rather creditable part in the matter. For he went right
straight out to the post-office and spent several hours in coding a
telegram to his solicitor, bidding that hard-headed man to threaten to
take out at once a warrant against the fellow who was on his track. He
said afterwards that it was a bit too thick on poor old Leonora to
be ballyragged any more. That was really the last of his outstanding
accounts, and he was ready to take his personal chance of the Divorce
Court if the blackmailer turned nasty. He would face it out--the
publicity, the papers, the whole bally show. Those were his simple
words....

He had made, however, the mistake of not telling Leonora where he was
going, so that, having seen him go to his room to fetch the code for
the telegram, and seeing, two hours later, Maisie Maidan come out of his
room, Leonora imagined that the two hours she had spent in silent agony
Edward had spent with Maisie Maidan in his arms. That seemed to her to
be too much. As a matter of fact, Maisie's being in Edward's room had
been the result, partly of poverty, partly of pride, partly of sheer
innocence. She could not, in the first place, afford a maid; she
refrained as much as possible from sending the hotel servants on
errands, since every penny was of importance to her, and she feared to
have to pay high tips at the end of her stay. Edward had lent her one
of his fascinating cases containing fifteen different sizes of scissors,
and, having seen from her window, his departure for the post-office, she
had taken the opportunity of returning the case. She could not see why
she should not, though she felt a certain remorse at the thought that
she had kissed the pillows of his bed. That was the way it took her.

But Leonora could see that, without the shadow of a doubt, the incident
gave Florence a hold over her. It let Florence into things and Florence
was the only created being who had any idea that the Ashburnhams were
not just good people with nothing to their tails. She determined a