“She was so respectable?”

“She was even a little Mid-Victorian, dear Mary; a sort of clean, healthy, Mid-Victorian angel.”

“There’s an incongruousness in the figure in connection with being obviously in hiding in a lodging-house street.”  And Mrs. Warren gave herself to reflection.

“I cannot make it as incongruous as she was.  I have not told you all.  I have saved to the last the feature which marked her most definitely as an Extraordinary Case.  I suppose one does that sort of thing from a sense of drama.”

“What else?” inquired Mrs. Warren, roused from her speculation.

“What respectable conclusion could one deduce from the fact that a letter lay on the table near her, sealed with an imposing coat of arms.  One’s eye having accidentally fallen on it, one could, of course, only avoid glancing at it again, so I recognised nothing definite.  Also, when I was announced unexpectedly, I saw her quickly withdraw her hand from her lips.  She had been kissing a ring she wore.  I could not help seeing that afterwards.  My good Mary, it was a ruby, of a size and colour which recalled the Arabian Nights.”

Mrs. Warren began to resign herself.

“No,” she said, “there is no respectable conclusion to be drawn.  It is tragic, but prosaic.  She has been governess or companion in some great house.  She may be a well-born woman.  It is ten times more hideous for her than if she were a girl.  She has to writhe under knowing that both her friends and her enemies are saying that she had not the excuse of not having been old enough to know better.”

“That might all be true,” he admitted promptly.  “It would be true if—­but she is not writhing.  She is no more unhappy than you or I. She is only anxious, and I could swear that she is only anxious about one thing.  The moment in which I swore fealty to her was when she said to me, ’I want to be quite safe—­until after.  I do not care for myself.  I will bear anything or do anything.  Only one thing matters.  I shall be such a good patient.’  Then her eyes grew moist, and she closed her lips decorously to keep them from trembling.

“They’re not usually like that,” Mrs. Warren remarked.

“I have not found them so,” he replied.

“Perhaps she believes the man will marry her.”

There was odd unexpectedness in the manner in which Dr. Warren suddenly began to laugh.

“My dear wife, if you could see her!  It is the incongruity of what we are saying which makes me laugh.  With her ruby and her coronets and her lodging-house street, she is of an impeccableness!  She does not even know she could be doubted.  Fifteen years of matrimony spent in South Kensington, three girls in the schoolroom and four boys at Eton, could not have crystallised a more unquestionable serenity.  And you are saying gravely, ‘Perhaps she believes the man will marry her.’  Whatsoever the situation is, I am absolutely sure that she has never asked herself whether he would or not.”