Simply good, convinced that morality is the basis of happiness, the fact that she and Frederick should draw their sustenance from guilt, however much purged by the passage of centuries, was one of the secret reasons of her sadness.  The more the memoired lady had forgotten herself, the more his book about her was read and the more free-handed he was to his wife; and all that he gave her was spent, after adding slightly to her nest-egg—­for she did hope and believe that some day people would cease to want to read of wickedness, and then Frederick would need supporting—­on helping the poor.  The parish flourished because, to take a handful at random, of the ill-behavior of the ladies Du Barri, Montespan, Pompadour, Ninon de l’Enclos, and even of learned Maintenon.  The poor were the filter through which the money was passed, to come out, Mrs. Arbuthnot hoped, purified.  She could do no more.  She had tried in days gone by to think the situation out, to discover the exact right course for her to take, but had found it, as she had found Frederick, too difficult, and had left it, as she had left Frederick, to God.  Nothing of this money was spent on her house or dress; those remained, except for the great soft sofa, austere.  It was the poor who profited.  Their very boots were stout with sins.  But how difficult it had been.  Mrs. Arbuthnot, groping for guidance, prayed about it to exhaustion.  Ought she perhaps to refuse to touch the money, to avoid it as she would have avoided the sins which were its source?  But then what about the parish’s boots?  She asked the vicar what he thought, and through much delicate language, evasive and cautious, it did finally appear that he was for the boots.

At least she had persuaded Frederick, when first he began his terrible successful career—­he only began it after their marriage; when she married him he had been a blameless official attached to the library of the British Museum—­to publish the memoirs under another name, so that she was not publicly branded.  Hampstead read the books with glee, and had no idea that their writer lived in its midst.  Frederick was almost unknown, even by sight, in Hampstead.  He never went to any of its gatherings.  Whatever it was he did in the way of recreation was done in London, but he never spoke of what he did or whom he saw; he might have been perfectly friendless for any mention he ever made of friends to his wife.  Only the vicar knew where the money for the parish came from, and he regarded it, he told Mrs. Arbuthnot, as a matter of honour not to mention it.

And at least her little house was not haunted by the loose lived ladies, for Frederick did his work away from home.  He had two rooms near the British Museum, which was the scene of his exhumations, and there he went every morning, and he came back long after his wife was asleep.  Sometimes he did not come back at all.  Sometimes she did not see him for several days together.  Then he would suddenly appear at breakfast, having let himself in with his latchkey the night before, very jovial and good-natured and free-handed and glad if she would allow him to give her something—­a well-fed man, contented with the world; a jolly, full-blooded, satisfied man.  And she was always gentle, and anxious that his coffee should be as he liked it.