The tenth of July that year was as the first day of summer.  There had been much fine weather, but always easterly or northerly; now, after a broken, rainy fortnight, the sun had come in full summer warmth with a gentle breeze, drifting here and there scent of the opening lime blossom.  In the garden, under the trees at the far end, Betty sewed at a garment, and the baby in her perambulator had her seventh morning sleep.  Gyp stood before a bed of pansies and sweet peas.  How monkeyish the pansies’ faces!  The sweet peas, too, were like tiny bright birds fastened to green perches swaying with the wind.  And their little green tridents, growing out from the queer, flat stems, resembled the antennae of insects.  Each of these bright frail, growing things had life and individuality like herself!

The sound of footsteps on the gravel made her turn.  Rosek was coming from the drawing-room window.  Rather startled, Gyp looked at him over her shoulder.  What had brought him at eleven o’clock in the morning?  He came up to her, bowed, and said: 

“I came to see Gustav.  He’s not up yet, it seems.  I thought I would speak to you first.  Can we talk?”

Hesitating just a second, Gyp drew off her gardening-gloves: 

“Of course!  Here?  Or in the drawing-room?”

Rosek answered: 

“In the drawing-room, please.”

A faint tremor passed through her, but she led the way, and seated herself where she could see Betty and the baby.  Rosek stood looking down at her; his stillness, the sweetish gravity of his well-cut lips, his spotless dandyism stirred in Gyp a kind of unwilling admiration.

“What is it?” she said.

“Bad business, I’m afraid.  Something must be done at once.  I have been trying to arrange things, but they will not wait.  They are even threatening to sell up this house.”

With a sense of outrage, Gyp cried: 

“Nearly everything here is mine.”

Rosek shook his head.

“The lease is in his name—­you are his wife.  They can do it, I assure you.”  A sort of shadow passed over his face, and he added:  “I cannot help him any more—­just now.”

Gyp shook her head quickly.

“No—­of course!  You ought not to have helped him at all.  I can’t bear—­” He bowed, and she stopped, ashamed.  “How much does he owe altogether?”

“About thirteen hundred pounds.  It isn’t much, of course.  But there is something else—­”

“Worse?”

Rosek nodded.

“I am afraid to tell you; you will think again perhaps that I am trying to make capital out of it.  I can read your thoughts, you see.  I cannot afford that you should think that, this time.”

Gyp made a little movement as though putting away his words.

“No; tell me, please.”

Rosek shrugged his shoulders.

“There is a man called Wagge, an undertaker—­the father of someone you know—­”