“Is there any idea of her dying?” Cynthia looked down upon her sister with astonishment.  “Geoffrey didn’t say so.”

“He said she was ‘very ill,’ and from her conduct she must be crazy.  So there’s hope.”

“You mean, for Philip?”

“For the world in general,” said Georgina, cautiously, with an unnoticed glance at her companion.  “But of course Philip has only himself to blame.  Why did he marry such a woman?”

“She may have been very beautiful—­or charming—­you don’t know.”

Lady Georgina shrugged her shoulders.

“Well, of course there must have been something to bait the hook!  But when a man marries out of his own class, unless the woman dies, the man goes to pieces.”

“Philip has not gone to pieces!” cried Cynthia indignantly.

“Because she removed herself.  For practical purposes that was as good as dying.  He has much to be grateful for.  Suppose she had come home with him!  She would have ruined him socially and morally.”

“And if she doesn’t die,” said Cynthia slowly, “what will Philip do then?”

“Ship her off to America, as she asks him, and prove a few little facts in the divorce court—­simple enough!  It oughtn’t to take him much more than six months to get free—­which he never has been yet!” added Georgina, with particular emphasis.

“It’s a mercy, my dear, that you didn’t just happen to be Lady Buntingford!”

“As if I had ever expected to be!” said Cynthia, much nettled.

“Well, you would, and you wouldn’t have been!” said Georgina obstinately.  “It’s very complicated.  You would have had to be married again—­after the divorce.”

“I don’t know why you are so unkind, Georgie!” There was a little quaver in Cynthia’s voice.  “Philip’s a very old friend of mine, and I’m very sorry and troubled about him.  Why do you smirch it all with these horrid remarks?”

“I won’t make any more, if you don’t like them,” said Georgina, unabashed—­“except just to say this, Cynthia—­for the first time I begin to believe in your chance.  There was always something not cleared up about Philip, and it might have turned out to be something past mending.  Now it is cleared up; and it’s bad—­but it might have been worse.  However—­we’ll change the subject.  What about that handsome young woman, Helena?”

“Now, if you’d chanced to say it was a mercy she didn’t happen to be Lady Buntingford, there’d have been some sense in it!” Cynthia’s tone betrayed the soreness within.

Lady Georgina laughed, or rather chuckled.

“I know Philip a great deal better than you do, my dear, though he is your friend.  He has made himself, I suspect, as usual, much too nice to that child; and he may think himself lucky if he hasn’t broken her heart.  He isn’t a flirt—­I agree.  But he produces the same effect—­without meaning it.  Without meaning anything indeed—­except to be good and kind to a young thing.  The men with Philip’s manners and Philip’s charm—­thank goodness, there aren’t many of them!—­have an abominable responsibility.  The poor moth flops into the candle before she knows where she is.  But as to marrying her—­it has never entered his head for a moment, and never would.”