itterness in his cup--"If only I could have
set up that tester!"

I said he'd had quite enough excitement for one day and that he really
must leave something for to-morrow.

On our way to the Tube Station I told him that I was going down to
Canterbury in a day or two. I told him what I was going for. He had been
so happy thinking about his house and his furniture and Viola that I
don't believe he'd ever thought about the Thesigers. At the word
"Canterbury" he thrust out his lower jaw so that the tips of his little
white teeth were covered (they always disappeared when he was angry).

He said: "Tell that old sinner I don't care a copper damn whether he
recognizes _me_ or not. What I can't stand and won't stand is the slur
he's putting on my wife."

* * * * *

And that is more or less what I did tell him.

I wired to the Canon to let him know I was coming, and he replied by
asking me to stay for the week-end.

I found the family diminished. Mildred had gone to a case; Millicent was
away for her Midsummer holiday; only Canon and Mrs. Thesiger and Norah
and Victoria were left. They had the air of survivors of an appalling
disaster. The Canon and Mrs. Thesiger were aged by about ten years; poor
Victoria looked tired and haggard; even Norah was depressed. You felt
that the trouble in the house was irreparable this time. They had held
their heads up against the scandal that was supposed to have occurred in
Belgium; they couldn't realize it; it was the sort of thing that occurred
to other people, not to them. And, after all, they didn't _know_ that it
had occurred. But the scandal of a _mesalliance_ which really had
occurred in England three weeks ago was well within their range, and
it had crushed them. It wasn't, as Jevons cynically maintained, that they
objected to a _mesalliance_--any _mesalliance_--more than to the other
thing; I think they had never really believed in the other thing, and
this marriage, so far from effacing it, had rubbed it in, had made it
appear publicly as if, after all, it might have been so. It was not only
excessively disagreeable to them in itself, but it left them in that
ghastly doubt.

And this time they couldn't look to me to save them.

Still it was evident that they looked to me for something. I was tackled
by each one of them in turn. The Canon wanted to know if I had anything
to tell him. Mrs. Thesiger wondered whether Viola would have enough to
liv