“I suppose it’s a long time since you met?” she said pleasantly.

“Miss Crofton and I have never met before,” said Miss Pendarth quietly.  “But I knew your husband very well in India, when he and I were both young.  My brother was in his regiment.”

“The dear old regiment!” exclaimed Miss Crofton.

Enid Crofton smiled a little to herself.  It amused her to see that these two old things—­for so she described them to herself—­had so quickly become friends.  “The Regiment!” How sick she had got of those two words during her second married life!  She was sorry that Alice, whom she liked, should be so queerly like Cecil.  Even their voices were alike, and she had uttered the two words with that peculiar intonation her husband always used when speaking of any of his old comrades-in-arms.

All the same Miss Pendarth’s sudden appearance had been a godsend.  Enid hated going back to the dreadful time of her husband’s death.

And then, when everything seemed going so pleasantly, and when Enid Crofton was still feeling a glow of joy at the thought of the cheque for L100, one of those things happened which seem sometimes to occur in life as if to remind us poor mortals that Fate is ever crouching round the corner, ready to spring.  The door opened, and the buxom little maid brought in two letters on the salver she had just been taught to use.

One of the envelopes was addressed in a clear, ordinary lady’s hand; the other, cheap and poor in quality, was in a firm, and yet unformed, handwriting.

Enid glanced at the two elder ladies; they were talking together eagerly.  She walked over to the bow-shaped window, and opened the commoner envelope: 

  Dear Madam,

I hope you will excuse me writing to tell you that my husband has had to leave Mr. Winter’s situation.  Piper considers he has been treated shameful, and that if he chose he could get the law on Mr. Winter.  I am writing to you unknown to Piper.  If you could see me I think I could explain exactly what it is I want Piper to get.  There do seem a difficulty now in getting jobs of Piper’s sort, but from what he has told me there were one or two other jobs you heard of that might have suited him.

  Yours respectfully,
  Amelia Piper.

Enid Crofton stared down at the signature with a sensation of puzzled dismay. Piper married? This was indeed a complication, and a complication which in her most anxious communings she had never thought of.  The man had always behaved like a bachelor—­for instance he had always made love to the maids.  There also came back to her the memory of something her husband had once said, with one of his grimly humorous looks:—­“Piper’s a regular dog!  If he’d been born in a different class of life he’d have been a real Don Juan.”  She now asked herself very anxiously how far a married Don Juan of any class confides in his wife?  Does he tell her his real secrets, or does he keep them to himself?  Judging by her own experience the average man who loves a woman is only too apt to tell her not only his own, but other people’s secrets.