“How do you know?” she said, presently.

“Because of the way he talked to mother before he came to see you here. 
She says he was frightfully upset when she told him about you and
Colin.”

“She told him that?”

“Apparently.”

“What did she do it for, Eliot?”

“What does mother do anything for?  I imagine she wanted to put Jerrold off so that you could stick on with Colin.  You’ve taken him off her hands and she wants him kept off.”

“So she told him I was Colin’s mistress.”

“Mind you, she doesn’t think a bit the worse of you for that.  She admires you for it no end.”

“Do you suppose I care what she thinks?  It’s her making Jerrold think it...Eliot, how could she?”

“She could, because she only sees things as they affect herself.”

“Do you believe she really thinks it?”

“She’s made herself think it because she wanted to.”

“But why—­why should she want to?”

“I’ve told you why.  She’s afraid of having to look after Colin.  I’ve no illusions about mother.  She’s always been like that.  She wouldn’t see what she was doing to you.  Before she did it she’d persuaded herself that it was Colin and not Jerrold that you cared for.  And she wouldn’t do it deliberately at all.  I know it has all the effect of low cunning, but it isn’t.  It’s just one of her sudden movements.  She’d rush into it on a blind impulse.”

Anne saw it all, she saw that Adeline had slandered her to Jerrold and to Eliot, that she had made use of her love for Colin, which was her love for Jerrold, to betray her; that she had betrayed her to safeguard her own happy life, without pity and without remorse; she had done all of these things and none of them.  They were the instinctive movements of her funk.  Where Adeline’s ease and happiness were concerned she was one incarnate funk.  You couldn’t think of her as a reasonable and responsible being, to be forgiven or unforgiven.

“It doesn’t matter how she did it.  It’s done now,” she said.

“Really, Anne, it was too bad of Colin.  He oughtn’t to have let you.”

“He couldn’t help it, poor darling.  He wasn’t in a state.  Don’t put that into his head.  It just had to happen...  I don’t care, Eliot.  If it was to be done again to-morrow I’d do it.  Only, if I’d known, I could have told Jerrold the truth.  The others can think what they like.  It’ll only make me stick to Colin all the more.  I promised Jerrold I’d look after him and I shall as long as he wants me.  It serves them all right.  They all left him to me—­Daddy and Aunt Adeline and Queenie, I mean—­and they can’t stop me now.”

“Mother doesn’t want to stop you.  It’s your father.”

“I’ll write and tell Daddy.  Besides, it’s too late.  If I left Colin to-morrow it wouldn’t stop the scandal.  My reputation’s gone and I can’t get it back, can I?”

“Dear Anne, you don’t know how adorable you are without it.”