CHAPTER XI

As soon as I saw Mrs. Meldrum I of course broke out.  “Is there anything in it? Is her general health—?”

Mrs. Meldrum checked me with her great amused blare.  “You’ve already seen her and she has told you her wondrous tale?  What’s ‘in it’ is what has been in everything she has ever done—­the most comical, tragical belief in herself.  She thinks she’s doing a ‘cure.’”

“And what does her husband think?”

“Her husband?  What husband?”

“Hasn’t she then married Lord Iffield?”

“Vous-en-etes la?” cried my hostess.  “Why he behaved like a regular beast.”

“How should I know?  You never wrote me.”  Mrs. Meldrum hesitated, covering me with what poor Flora called the particular organ.  “No, I didn’t write you—­I abstained on purpose.  If I kept quiet I thought you mightn’t hear over there what had happened.  If you should hear I was afraid you would stir up Mr. Dawling.”

“Stir him up?”

“Urge him to fly to the rescue; write out to him that there was another chance for him.”

“I wouldn’t have done it,” I said.

“Well,” Mrs. Meldrum replied, “it was not my business to give you an opportunity.”

“In short you were afraid of it.”

Again she hesitated and though it may have been only my fancy I thought she considerably reddened.  At all events she laughed out.  Then “I was afraid of it!” she very honestly answered.

“But doesn’t he know?  Has he given no sign?”

“Every sign in life—­he came straight back to her.  He did everything to get her to listen to him, but she hasn’t the smallest idea of it.”

“Has he seen her as she is now?” I presently and just a trifle awkwardly enquired.

“Indeed he has, and borne it like a hero.  He told me all about it.”

“How much you’ve all been through!” I found occasion to remark.  “Then what has become of him?”

“He’s at home in Hampshire.  He has got back his old place and I believe by this time his old sisters.  It’s not half a bad little place.”

“Yet its attractions say nothing to Flora?”

“Oh Flora’s by no means on her back!” my fried declared.

“She’s not on her back because she’s on yours.  Have you got her for the rest of your life?”

Once more Mrs. Meldrum genially glared.  “Did she tell you how much the Hammond Synges have kindly left her to live on?  Not quite eighty pounds a year.”

“That’s a good deal, but it won’t pay the oculist.  What was it that at last induced her to submit to him?”

“Her general collapse after that brute of an Iffield’s rupture.  She cried her eyes out—­she passed through a horror of black darkness.  Then came a gleam of light, and the light appears to have broadened.  She went into goggles as repentant Magdalens go into the Catholic church.”