Mrs. Maynard had only laughed.

“I’m not in the least likely to find fault with your manners,” she said cheerfully.  “They’re really quite normal, and as for your morals, they are your own affair, my dear man.  Anyway, there is at least one bond between us—­Monkshaven heartily disapproves of both of us.”

Greenacres was a delightful place, built rather on the lines of a French country house, with the sitting-rooms leading one into the other and each opening in its turn on to a broad wooden verandah.  The latter ran round three sides of the house, and in summer the delicate pink of Dorothy Perkins fought for supremacy with the deeper red of the Crimson Rambler, converting it into a literal bower of roses.

Audrey was on the steps to greet the two girls when they arrived, looking, as usual, as though she had just quitted the hands of an expert French maid.  It was in a great measure to the ultra-perfection of her toilette that she owed the critical attitude accorded her by the feminine half of Monkshaven.  To the provincial mind, the fact that she dyed her hair, ordered her frocks from Paris, and kept a French chef to cook her food, were all so many indications of an altogether worldly and abandoned character—­and of a wealth that was secretly to be envied—­and the more venomous among Audrey’s detractors lived in the perennial hope of some day unveiling the scandal which they were convinced lay hidden in her past.

Audrey was perfectly aware of the gossip of which she was the subject—­and completely indifferent to it.

“It amuses them,” she would say blithely, “and it doesn’t hurt me in the least.  If Mr. Trent and I both left the neighbourhood, Monkshaven would be at a loss for a topic of conversation—­unless they decided, as they probably would, that we had eloped together!”

She herself was quite above the petty meanness of envying another woman’s looks or clothes, and she beamed frank admiration over Molly’s appearance as she led the way into the house.

“Molly, you’re too beautiful to be true,” she declared, pausing in the hall to inspect the girl’s young loveliness in its setting of shady hat and embroidered muslin frock.  Big golden poppies on the hat, and a girdle at her waist of the same tawny hue, emphasized the rare colour of her eyes—­in shadow, brown like an autumn leaf, gold like amber when the sunlight lay in them—­and the whole effect was deliciously arresting.

“You’ve been spending your substance in riotous purple and fine linen,” pursued Audrey relentlessly.  “That frock was never evolved in Oldhampton, I’m positive.”

Molly blushed—­not the dull, unbecoming red most women achieve, but a delicate pink like the inside of a shell that made her look even more irresistibly distracting than before.

“No,” she admitted reluctantly, “I sent for this from town.”

Sara glanced at her with quick surprise.  Entirely absorbed in her own thoughts, she had failed to observe the expensive charm of Molly’s toilette and now regarded it attentively.  Where had she obtained the money to pay for it?  Only a very little while ago she had been in debt, and now here she was launching out into expenditure which common sense would suggest must be quite beyond her means.