“How?”

“I am keeping on the house for her.”

Anne’s face flushed.

“What house?”

“A farm, out in the country.”

“That house is yours?  You were living with her there?”

“Yes.”

Her face hardened.  She was thinking of her dead child, who was to have gone into the country to get strong.

He was tortured by the same thought.  Maggie, his mistress, had grown fat and rosy in the pure air of Holderness.  Peggy had died in Scale.

In her bitterness she turned on him.

“And what guarantee have I that you will not go to her again?”

“My word.  Isn’t that sufficient?”

“I don’t know, Walter.  It would have been once.  It isn’t now.  What proof have I of your honour?”

“My—­”

“I beg your pardon.  I forgot.  A man’s honour and a woman’s honour are two very different things.”

“They are both things that are usually taken for granted, and not mentioned.”

“I will try to take it for granted.  You must forgive my having mentioned it.  There is one thing I must know.  Has she—­that woman—­any children?”

“She has none.”

Up till that moment, the examination had been conducted with the coolness of intense constraint.  But for her one burst of feeling, Anne had sustained her tone of business-like inquiry, her manner of the woman of committees.  Now, as she asked her question, her voice shook with the beating of her heart.  Majendie, as he answered, heard her draw a long, deep breath of relief.

“And you propose to keep on this house for her?” she said calmly.

“Yes.  She has settled in there, and she will be well looked after.”

“Who will look after her?”

“The Pearsons.  They’re people I can trust.”

“And, besides the house, I suppose you will give her money?”

“I must make her a small allowance.”

“That is a very unwise arrangement.  Whatever help is given her had much better come from me.”

“From you?”

“From a woman.  It will be the best safeguard for the girl.”

He saw her drift and smiled.

“Am I to understand that you propose to rescue her?”

“It’s my duty—­my work.”

“Your work?”

“You may not realise it; but that is the work I’ve been doing for the last three years.  I am doubly responsible for a girl who has suffered through my husband’s fault.”

“What do you want to do with her?”

“I want, if possible, to reclaim her.”

He smiled again.

“Do you realise what sort of girl she is?”

“I’m afraid, Walter, she is what you have made her.”

“And so you want to reclaim her?”

“I do, indeed.”

“You couldn’t reclaim her.”

“She is very young, isn’t she?”

“N—­no—­She’s eight—­and—­twenty.”