“I remember.”  Lady Cayley’s face shone with the illumination of her memory.  “So we did.  Just after you were married?”

She paused discreetly.  “You haven’t brought Mrs. Majendie with you?”

“N—­no—­er—­she isn’t very well.  She doesn’t go out much at night.”

“Indeed?  I did hear, didn’t I, that you had a little—­” She paused, if anything, more discreetly than before.

“A little girl.  Yes.  That history is a year old now.”

“Wallie!” cried Mrs. Hannay, “it’s a year and three months.  And a darling she is, too.”

“I’m sure she is,” said Sarah in the softest voice imaginable.  There was another pause, the discreetest of them all.  “Is she like Mr. Majendie?”

“No, she’s like her mother.”  Mrs. Hannay was instantly transported with the blessed vision of Peggy.  “She’s got blue, blue eyes, Sarah; and the dearest little goldy ducks’ tails curling over the nape of her neck.”

Majendie’s sad face brightened under praise of Peggy.

“Sweet,” murmured Sarah.  “I love them when they’re like that.”  She saw how she could flatter him.  If he loved to talk about the baby, she could talk about babies till all was blue.  They talked for more than half an hour.  It was the prettiest, most innocent conversation in which Sarah had ever taken part.

When Majendie had left (he seldom kept it up later than ten o’clock), she turned to Mrs. Hannay.

“What’s the matter with him?” said she.  “He looks awful.”

“He’s married the wrong woman, my dear.  That’s what’s the matter with him.”

“I knew he would.  He was born to do it.”

“Thank goodness,” said Mrs. Hannay, “he’s got the child.”

“Oh—­the child!”

She intimated by a shrug how much she thought of that consolation.

CHAPTER XXI

The new firm of Hannay & Majendie promised to do well.  Hannay had a genius for business, and Majendie was carried along by the inspiration of his senior partner.  Hannay was the soul of the firm and Majendie its brain.  He was, Hannay maintained, an ideal partner, the indefatigable master of commercial detail.

The fourth year of his marriage found Majendie supremely miserable at home; and established, in his office, before a fair, wide prospect of financial prosperity.  The office had become his home.  He worked there early and late, with a dumb, indomitable industry.  For the first time in his life Majendie was beginning to take an interest in his business.  Disappointed in the only form of happiness that appealed to him, he applied himself gravely and steadily to shipping, finding some personal satisfaction in the thought that Anne and Peggy would benefit by this devotion.  There was Peggy’s education to be thought of.  When she was older they would travel.  There would be greater material comfort and a wider life for Anne.  He himself counted for little in his schemes.  At thirty-five he found himself, with all his flames extinguished, settling down into the dull habits and the sober hopes of middle age.