from that point of view, that very
novel point of view. 'It's quite useless,' he said, 'to get in the least
nervous or hysterical. I don't care for the darkness just now. That was
all. Tell the girl I am a strange doctor--Dr Simon's new partner. You
are clever at conventionalities, Sheila. Invent! I said our patient must
be kept quiet--I really think he must. That is all, so far as Ada is
concerned.... What on earth else ARE we to say?' he broke out. 'That,
for the present to EVERYBODY, is our only possible story. It will give
us what we must have--time. And next--where is the second volume of
Quain? I want that. And next--why have you broken faith with me?' Mrs
Lawford sat down. This sudden and baffling outburst had stupefied her.

'I can't, I can't make head or tail of what you say. And as for having
broken faith, as you call it, would any wife, would any sane woman face
what you have brought on us, a situation like this, without seeking
advice and help? Mr Bethany will be perfectly discreet--if he thinks
discretion desirable. He is the only available friend we have close
enough to ask at once. And things of this kind are, I suppose, if
anybody's concern, his. It's certain to leak out. Everybody will hear
of it. Don't flatter yourself you are going to hush up a thing like this
for long. You can't keep living skeletons in a cupboard. You think only
of yourself, only of your own misfortune. But who's to know, pray, that
you really are my husband--if you are? The sooner I get the vicar on
my side the better for us both. Who in the whole of the parish--I ask
you--and you must have the sense left to see that--who will believe that
a respectable man, a gentleman, a Churchman, would deliberately go out
to seek an afternoon's amusement in a poky little country churchyard?
Why, apart from everything else, THAT was absolutely mad to start with.
Can you really wonder at the result?'

Probably because she still steadfastly refused to look at him, her
memory kept losing its hold on the appalling fact facing them. She
realised fully only that she was in a great, unwarrantable, and
insurmountable difficulty, but until she actually lifted her eyes for a
moment she had not fully realised what that difficulty was. She got up
with a sudden and horrible nausea. 'One moment,' she said, 'I will see
if the servants have gone to bed.'

That long saturnine face, behind which Lawford lay in a dull and
desperate ambush, smiled. Something par