s?'

'I am ashamed--I don't know how to thank you.'

'No time shall be lost.' He rose. 'If Mrs. Handover will help us, I
will bring her here; then I shall see you again. In any case, of
course, I will come back--there will be other business. But you ought
to have some friend--some lady.'

'There's _no_ one I can ask.'

'Oh, but of all the people you know in London--surely!'

'They are not friends in that sense. I understand it now--fifty
acquaintances; no friend.'

'But let me think--let me think. What was the name of that lady I met
here, whose children you used to teach?'

'Mrs. Langland. She is very kind and friendly, but she lives at
Gunnersbury--so far--and I couldn't trouble her.'

Upon one meeting and a short conversation, with subsequent remarks from
Edgar Abbott, Rolfe had grounded a very favourable opinion of Mrs
Langland. She dwelt clearly in his mind as 'a woman with no nonsense
about her', likely to be of much helpfulness at a crisis such as the
present. With difficulty he persuaded Mrs. Abbott to sit down and write
a few lines, to be posted at once to Gunnersbury.

'I haven't dared to ask her to come. But I have said that I am alone.'

'Quite enough, I think, if she is at home.'

He took his leave, and drove back to Bayswater, posting the letter and
despatching two telegrams on the way.

Of course, his visit to Greystone was given up.

CHAPTER 6

Hugh Carnaby was gratified by the verdict of _felo de se_. He applauded
the jury for their most unexpected honesty. One had taken for granted
the foolish tag about temporary madness, which would have been an
insult to everybody's common-sense.

'It's a pity they no longer bury at four cross-roads, with a stake in
his inside. (Where's that from? I remember it somehow.) The example
wouldn't be bad.'

'You're rather early-Victorian,' replied Sibyl, who by this term was
wont to signify barbarism or crudity in art, letters, morality, or
social feeling. 'Besides, there's no merit in the verdict. It only
means that the City jury is in a rage. Yet every one of them would be
dishonest on as great a scale if they dared, or had the chance.'

'Something in that, I dare say,' conceded Hugh.

He admired his wife more than ever. Calm when she lost her trinkets,
Sibyl exhibited no less self-command now that she was suddenly deprived
of her whole fortune, about eight hundred a year. She had once remarked
on the pleasantness and fitness of a wife's po