He had found his way to London in the small hours of the day following his scene with Rachel, intending to keep his promise, and let his former wife alone.  The cashing of Rachel’s cheque had given him and Anita some agreeable moments; though Anita was growing disturbed that he would not tell her where the money came from.  They had found fresh lodgings in a really respectable Bloomsbury street; they had both bought clothes, and little Netta had been rigged out.  Delane had magnificently compounded with his most pressing creditors, and had taken Anita to a theatre.  But he had been discontented with her appearance there.  She had really lost all her good looks.  If it hadn’t been for the kid—­

And now, after this interval, his obsession had swooped upon him again.  It was an obsession of hate—­which simply could not endure, when it came to the point, that Rachel Henderson should vanish unscathed into the future of a happy marriage, while he remained the doomed failure and outcast he knew himself to be.  Rachel’s implied confession rankled in him like a burn. Tanner!—­that wretched weakling, with his miserable daubs that nobody wanted to buy.  So Rachel had gone to him, as soon as she had driven her husband away, no doubt to complain of her ill-treatment, to air her woes.  The fellow had philandered round her some time, and had shown an insolent and interfering temper once or twice towards himself.  Yes!—­he could imagine it all!—­her flight, and Tanner’s maudlin sympathy—­tears—­caresses—­the natural sequel.  And then her pose of complete innocence at the divorce proceedings—­the Judge’s remarks.  Revolting hypocrisy!  If Tanner had been still alive, he would somehow have exposed him—­somehow have made him pay.  Lucky for him he was drowned in that boat accident on Lake Nipissing!  And no doubt Rachel thought that the accident had made everything safe for her.

Every incident now, every phase of his conversation with her was assuming a monstrous and distorted significance in his mind.  How easily she had yielded on the subject of the money!  He might have asked a great deal more—­and he would have got it.  Very likely Ellesborough was well off—­Yankees generally were—­and she knew that what she gave Delane as hush money would make very little difference to her.  Ellesborough no doubt would not look very closely into her shekels, having sufficient of his own.  Otherwise it might occur to him to wonder how she had got rid of that L500.  Would it pinch her?  Probably, if all she had for capital was the old chap’s legacy.  Well—­serve her right—­serve her, damned, doubly right!  Ellesborough’s kisses would make up.