fine that it could be broken any day. There would be no pangs
of conscience, no tears, no reproaches; no tyrannies of the heart and
revolutions of the soul. It was to Mrs. Nevill Tyson's eternal credit
that she made no claims. Clearly, when a tie can be broken to-morrow,
there is no urgent necessity for breaking it to-day.

So in the afternoon Stanistreet called again at Ridgmount Gardens.

Whether or no Mrs. Nevill Tyson ignored the possibility of passion, she
had the largest ideas of the scope and significance of friendship. She
made no claims, but she exacted from Louis a multitude of small services
for which he was held to be sufficiently repaid in smiles. Whether she
knew it or not, she had grown dependent on him. She had always shown an
affecting confidence in the integrity of masculine judgment, and she
consulted him about her dividends and the pattern of her gowns with
equally guileless reliance.

To-day he found her in a state of agitated perplexity. She put a letter
into his hands. He was to read it; he might skip the first page, it was
all about calico. There--that was what she meant.

The letter was from Mrs. Wilcox imploring her to go back to Drayton "till
this little cloud blows over."

"I don't want to go to Drayton, to those people. They talk. I know they
talk, and I don't like them. Besides, I want to stay in London. Nobody
knows me here except you."

"Do I know you?"

"Well, if you don't, you ought to--by now. I wonder if mother wants me.
She might come here, though I'd rather she didn't. She talks too, you
know; she doesn't mean to, but she can't help it. What I like about you
is--you never talk."

"You won't let me."

"What ought I to do?" she asked helplessly. "Must I go?"

"No," said Louis emphatically. "Don't."

"Why not?"

He tossed the letter aside, and their eyes met.

"It would look like defeat."

CHAPTER XIII

MRS. WILCOX TO THE RESCUE

So Nevill Tyson had left his wife. This was the most exciting act in the
drama that had entertained Drayton Parva for two years. He had brought
down the house. Presently it seemed that Drayton Parva was not unprepared
for the catastrophe. Miss Batchelor was sadly afraid that something of
this sort had been going on for long enough. But she had not condemned
Nevill Tyson wholesale and without a hearing; in these cases there are
always faults on both sides. A man as much in love with his wife as he
was would never have left her with