eet to see if he was coming....

But before she reached the corner, her escapade suddenly presented
itself to her as childish madness, silly, inexcusable; and she thought
self-reproachfully, "How impulsive I am!" and sharply turned back
towards Mrs. Maldon's house, which seemed to be about ten miles off.

A moment later she heard hurried footfalls behind her on the narrow
brick pavement, and, after one furtive glance over her shoulder, she
quickened her pace. Louis Fores in all his elegance was pursuing her!
Nothing had happened to him. He was not ill; he was merely a little
late! After all, she would sit by his side at the supper-table! She
had a spasm of shame that was excruciating. But at the same time she
was wildly glad. And already this inebriating illusion of an ingenuous
girl concerning a common male was helping to shape monstrous events.

CHAPTER II

LOUIS' DISCOVERY

I

Louis Fores was late at his grand-aunt's because he had by a certain
preoccupation, during a period of about an hour, been rendered
oblivious of the passage of time. The real origin of the affair went
back nearly sixty years, to an indecorous episode in the history of
the Maldon family.

At that date--before Mrs. Maldon had even met Austin Maldon, her
future husband--Austin's elder brother Athelstan, who was well
established as an earthenware broker in London, had a conjugal
misfortune, which reached its climax in the Matrimonial Court, and
left the injured and stately Athelstan with an incomplete household,
a spoiled home, and the sole care of two children, a boy and a girl.
These children were, almost of necessity, clumsily brought up. The
girl married the half-brother of a Lieutenant-General Fores, and Louis
Fores was their son. The boy married an American girl, and had issue,
Julian Maldon and some daughters.

At the age of eighteen, Louis Fores, amiable, personable, and an
orphan, was looking for a career. He had lived in the London suburb of
Barnes, and under the influence of a father whose career had chiefly
been to be the stepbrother of Lieutenant-General Fores. He was in
full possession of the conventionally snobbish ideals of the suburb,
reinforced by more than a tincture of the stupendous and unsurpassed
snobbishness of the British Army. He had no money, and therefore the
liberal professions and the higher division of the Civil Service were
closed to him. He had the choice of two activities: he might tout for
wine,