ly spoke out her secret
thoughts. But Miss Pendarth was destined to be even more surprised, for
Betty suddenly put out her hand, and laid it on the other's arm.

"I want to tell you," she said earnestly, "that as far as I am concerned,
everything that happened then is quite, quite over. I don't think that
Godfrey would have been happy with me, and so I feel that we both had a
great escape. I want to tell you this because so many people knew of our
engagement, and I'm afraid his coming back like this may cause a lot of
silly, vulgar talk."

Miss Pendarth was more touched than she would have cared to admit even to
herself. "You can count on me, my dear," she said gravely, "and may I
say, Betty, that I feel sure you're right in feeling that you would have
been most unhappy with him?"

As Betty walked on to the post office she was glad that _that_ little
ordeal was over.

* * * * *

John Tosswill was one of those men who instinctively avoid and put off
as long as may be, a difficult or awkward moment. That was perhaps one
reason why he had not made a better thing of his life. So his wife was
not surprised when, after luncheon, he observed rather nervously that he
was going out, and that she must tell Godfrey Radmore how sorry he was
not to be there to welcome him.

As she remained silent, he added, rather shamefacedly:--"I'll be back in
time to have a few words with him before dinner."

Poor Janet! She still loved her husband as much as she had done in the
days when he, the absent-minded, gentle, refined scholar, made his way
into her heart. Nay, in a sense, she loved him more, for he had become
entirely dependent on her. But though she loved and admired him, she no
longer relied on him, as she had once done; he had a queer way of failing
her at the big moments of life, and now, to-day, she felt it too bad of
him to shirk the moment of Godfrey Radmore's return. His presence would
have made everything easier, for he had never admitted either to himself
or her, that Godfrey had behaved in a strange or untoward manner.

As she turned over the leaves of a nursery-man's catalogue and gazed at
the list of plants and bulbs she could not afford to buy, long-forgotten
scenes crowded on her memory.

Radmore had been the violent, unreasonable element in the painful
episode, for Betty had behaved well, almost too well. The girl would have
thrown in her lot with her lover, but both her father and