She apparently had no such suspicion, for she asked Paul in all good faith to call the next day and tell her all about Russia—­“dear Russia.”

“My cousin Maggie,” she added, “is staying with me.  She is a dear girl.  I am sure you will like her.”

Paul accepted with alacrity, but reserved to himself the option of hating Mrs. Sydney Bamborough’s cousin Maggie, merely because that young lady existed and happened to be staying in Upper Brook Street.

At five o’clock the next afternoon he presented himself at the house of mourning, and completely filled up its small entrance-hall.

He was shown into the drawing-room, where he discovered Miss Margaret Delafield in the act of dragging her hat off in front of the mirror over the mantelpiece.  He heard a suppressed exclamation of amused horror, and found himself shaking hands with Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.

The lady mentioned Paul’s name and her cousin’s relationship in that casual manner which constitutes an introduction in these degenerate days.  Miss Delafield bowed, laughed, and moved toward the door.  She left the room, and behind her an impression of breeziness and health, of English girlhood and a certain bright cheerfulness which acts as a filter in social muddy waters.

“It is very good of you to come—­I was moping,” said Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.  She was, as a matter of fact, resting before the work of the evening.  This lady thoroughly understood the art of being beautiful.

Paul did not answer at once.  He was looking at a large photograph which stood in a frame on the mantelpiece—­the photograph of a handsome man of twenty-eight or thirty, small-featured, fair, and shifty looking.

“Who is that?” he asked abruptly.

“Do you not know?  My husband.”

Paul muttered an apology, but he did not turn away from the photograph.

“Oh, never mind,” said Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, in reply to his regret that he had stumbled upon a painful subject.  “I never—­”

She paused.

“No,” she went on, “I won’t say that.”

But, so far as conveying what she meant was concerned, she might just as well have uttered the words.

“I do not want a sympathy which is unmerited,” she said gravely.

He turned and looked at her, sitting in a graceful attitude, the incarnation of a most refined and nineteenth-century misfortune.  She raised her eyes to his for a moment—­a sort of photographic instantaneous shutter, exposing for the hundredth part of a second the sensitive plate of her heart.  Then she suppressed a sigh—­badly.

“I was married horribly young,” she said, “before I knew what I was doing.  But even if I had known I do not suppose I should have had the strength of mind to resist my father and mother.”

“They forced you into it?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bamborough.  And it is possible that a respectable and harmless pair of corpses turned in their respective coffins somewhere in the neighborhood of Norwood.