assented coldly, with horror at his perception of her
drift.

His coldness riled her.

"Who," said she with emphasis, "is the lady who keeps making those awful
eyes at us over Pussy's top-knot?"

"That lady," said Majendie, "as it happens, is my wife."

"Why didn't you tell me that before? That's what comes, you see, of not
introducing people. I'll tell you one thing, Wallie. She's awfully
handsome. But you always had good taste. Br-r-r, there's a draught
cutting my head off. You might shut that window, there's a dear."

He shut it.

"And put my cup down."

He put it down.

Anne saw him. She had seen everything.

"And help me on with my cape."

He lifted the heavy sable thing with two fingers, and helped her
gingerly. A scent, horrid and thick, and profuse with memories, was
shaken from her as she turned her shoulder. He hoped she was going. But
she was not going; not she. Her body swayed towards him sinuously from
hips obstinately immobile, weighted, literally, with her unshakable
determination to sit on.

She rewarded him with a smile which seemed to him, if anything, more
atrociously luminous than the last. "I must keep you up to the mark,"
said she, as she turned with it. "Your wife's looking at you, and I feel
responsible for your good behaviour. Don't keep her waiting. Can't you
see she wants to go?"

"And I want to go, too," said he savagely. And he went.

And as she watched Mrs. Walter Majendie's departure, Lady Cayley smiled
softly to herself; tasting the first delicious flavour of success.

She had made Mrs. Walter Majendie betray herself; she had made her
furious; she had made her go.

She had sat Mrs. Walter Majendie out.

If the town of Scale, the mayor and the aldermen, had risen and given her
an ovation, she could not have celebrated more triumphally her return.

CHAPTER XIII

Anne and her husband walked home in silence across the Park, grateful for
its darkness. Majendie could well imagine that she would not want to
talk. He made allowance for her repulsion; he respected it and her
silence as its sign. She had every right to her resentment. He had let
her in for the Hannays, who had let her in for the inconceivable
encounter. On the day of her divorce Sarah Cayley had removed herself
from Scale, and he had shrunk from providing for the supreme
embarrassment of her return. He had looked on her as definitely,
consummately departed. She had disappeared, down dingy vistas, in