r, just a few lady friends to cheer her up a bit," answered
the woman, with her abominable simper; "poor dear, she do get that low
with you away so much, and no wonder; and then all these money
troubles, and she night by night working hard for her living at the
music hall. Often and often have I seen her crying over it all----"

"Ah," said he, breaking in upon her eloquence, "I suppose that the
lady friends smoke cigars. Well, clear away this mess and leave me--
stop, give me a brandy-and-soda first. I will wait for your mistress."

The woman stopped talking and did as she was bid, for there was a look
in Mr. Quest's eye which she did not quite like. So having placed the
brandy-and-soda-water before him she left him to his own reflections.

Apparently they were not very pleasant ones. He walked round the room,
which was reeking of patchouli or some such compound, well mixed with
the odour of stale cigar smoke, looking absently at the gee-gar
ornaments. On the mantelpiece were some photographs, and among them,
to his disgust, he saw one of himself taken many years ago. With
something as near an oath as he ever indulged in, he seized it, and
setting fire to it over the gas, waited till the flames began to
scorch his fingers, and then flung it, still burning, into the grate.
Then he looked at himself in the glass in the mantelpiece--the room
was full of mirrors--and laughed bitterly at the incongruity of his
gentlemanlike, respectable, and even refined appearance, in that
vulgar, gaudy, vicious-looking room.

Suddenly he bethought him of the letter in his wife's handwriting
which he had stolen from the pocket of Edward Cossey's coat. He drew
it out, and throwing the tea gown and the interminable glove off the
sofa, sat down and began to read it. It was, as he had expected, a
love letter, a wildly passionate love letter, breathing language which
in some places almost touched the beauty of poetry, vows of undying
affection that were throughout redeemed from vulgarity and even from
silliness by their utter earnestness and self-abandonment. Had the
letter been one written under happier circumstances and innocent of
offence against morality, it would have been a beautiful letter, for
passion at its highest has always a wild beauty of its own.

He read it through and then carefully folded it and restored it to his
pocket. "The woman has a heart," he said to himself, "no one can doubt
it. And yet I could never touch it, thoug