“But then she’s entangled herself with Perrott,” St. John continued; “and I have reason to think, from something I saw in the passage, that everything isn’t as it should be between Arthur and Susan.  There’s a young female lately arrived from Manchester.  A very good thing if it were broken off, in my opinion.  Their married life is something too horrible to contemplate.  Oh, and I distinctly heard old Mrs. Paley rapping out the most fearful oaths as I passed her bedroom door.  It’s supposed that she tortures her maid in private—­it’s practically certain she does.  One can tell it from the look in her eyes.”

“When you’re eighty and the gout tweezes you, you’ll be swearing like a trooper,” Terence remarked.  “You’ll be very fat, very testy, very disagreeable.  Can’t you imagine him—­bald as a coot, with a pair of sponge-bag trousers, a little spotted tie, and a corporation?”

After a pause Hirst remarked that the worst infamy had still to be told.  He addressed himself to Helen.

“They’ve hoofed out the prostitute.  One night while we were away that old numskull Thornbury was doddering about the passages very late.  (Nobody seems to have asked him what he was up to.) He saw the Signora Lola Mendoza, as she calls herself, cross the passage in her nightgown.  He communicated his suspicions next morning to Elliot, with the result that Rodriguez went to the woman and gave her twenty-four hours in which to clear out of the place.  No one seems to have enquired into the truth of the story, or to have asked Thornbury and Elliot what business it was of theirs; they had it entirely their own way.  I propose that we should all sign a Round Robin, go to Rodriguez in a body, and insist upon a full enquiry.  Something’s got to be done, don’t you agree?”

Hewet remarked that there could be no doubt as to the lady’s profession.

“Still,” he added, “it’s a great shame, poor woman; only I don’t see what’s to be done—­”

“I quite agree with you, St. John,” Helen burst out.  “It’s monstrous.  The hypocritical smugness of the English makes my blood boil.  A man who’s made a fortune in trade as Mr. Thornbury has is bound to be twice as bad as any prostitute.”

She respected St. John’s morality, which she took far more seriously than any one else did, and now entered into a discussion with him as to the steps that were to be taken to enforce their peculiar view of what was right.  The argument led to some profoundly gloomy statements of a general nature.  Who were they, after all—­what authority had they—­what power against the mass of superstition and ignorance?  It was the English, of course; there must be something wrong in the English blood.  Directly you met an English person, of the middle classes, you were conscious of an indefinable sensation of loathing; directly you saw the brown crescent of houses above Dover, the same thing came over you.  But unfortunately St. John added, you couldn’t trust these foreigners—­