can't
think why you're giving yourself all this trouble."

"Why, because they're saying _now_--"

Mrs. Majendie rose. "Excuse me, if you've only come to tell me what
people are saying, it is useless. I never listen to what people say."

"It isn't likely they'd say it to you."

"Then why should _you_ say it to me?"

"Because it concerns my reputation."

"Forgive me, but--your reputation does not concern me."

"And how about your husband's reputation, Mrs. Majendie?"

"My husband's reputation can take care of itself."

"Not in Scale."

"There's no more scandal talked in Scale than in any other place. I never
pay any attention to it."

"That's all very well--but you must defend yourself sometimes. And when
it comes to saying that I've been living with Mr. Majendie in Scarby for
the last three years--"

Mrs. Majendie was so calm that Lady Cayley fancied that, after all, this
was not the first time she had heard that rumour.

"Let them say it," said she. "Nobody'll believe it."

"Everybody believes it. I came to you because I was afraid you'd be the
first."

"To believe it? I assure you, Lady Cayley, I should be the last."

"What was to prevent you? You didn't know me."

"No. But I know my husband."

"So do I."

"Not _now_" said Mrs. Majendie quietly.

Lady Cayley's bosom heaved. She had felt that she had risen to the
occasion. She had achieved a really magnificent renunciation. With almost
suicidal generosity, she had handed Majendie over intact, as it were, to
his insufferable wife. She was wounded in several very sensitive places
by the married woman's imperious denial of her part in him, by her
attitude of indestructible and unique possession. If _she_ didn't know
him she would like to know who did. But up till now she had meant to
spare Mrs. Majendie her knowledge of him, for she was not ill-natured.
She was sorry for the poor, inept, unhappy prude.

Even now, seated in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room, she had no impulse to
wound her mortally. Her instinct was rather to patronise and pity, to
unfold the long result of a superior experience, to instruct this woman
who was so incompetent to deal with men, who had spoiled, stupidly, her
husband's life and her own. In that moment Sarah contemplated nothing
more outrageous than a little straight talk with Mrs. Majendie.

"Look here, Mrs. Majendie," she said, with an air of finely ungovernable
impulse, "you're a saint. You know no more about men than