“I want to see you and talk something over, so I’m running down on Sunday afternoon.  There is a train of sorts.  Any loft will do for me to sleep in if your house is full, as it may be, I suppose, at this time of year.  On second thoughts I will tell you what I want to see you about.  You know, of course, that since her father died I am Helen Bellew’s only guardian.  Her present position is one in which no woman should be placed; I am convinced it ought to be put an end to.  That man Bellew deserves no consideration.  I cannot write of him coolly, so I won’t write at all.  It is two years now since they separated, entirely, as I consider, through his fault.  The law has placed her in a cruel and helpless position all this time; but now, thank God, I believe we can move for a divorce.  You know me well enough to realise what I have gone through before coming to this conclusion.  Heaven knows if I could hit on some other way in which her future could be safeguarded, I would take it in preference to this, which is most repugnant; but I cannot.  You are the only woman I can rely on to be interested in her, and I must see Bellew.  Let not the fat and just Benson and his estimable horses be disturbed on my account; I will walk up and carry my toothbrush.

                              “Affectionately your cousin,
          
                                   “Gregory vigil.”

Mrs. Pendyce smiled.  She saw no joke, but she knew from the wording of the last sentence that Gregory saw one, and she liked to give it a welcome; so smiling and wrinkling her forehead, she mused over the letter.  Her thoughts wandered.  The last scandal—­Lady Rose Bethany’s divorce—­had upset the whole county, and even now one had to be careful what one said.  Horace would not like the idea of another divorce-suit, and that so close to Worsted Skeynes.  When Helen left on Thursday he had said: 

“I’m not sorry she’s gone.  Her position is a queer one.  People don’t like it.  The Maidens were quite——­”

And Mrs. Pendyce remembered with a glow at her heart how she had broken in: 

“Ellen Maiden is too bourgeoise for anything!”

Nor had Mr. Pendyce’s look of displeasure effaced the comfort of that word.

Poor Horace!  The children took after him, except George, who took after her brother Hubert.  The dear boy had gone back to his club on Friday—­the day after Helen and the others went.  She wished he could have stayed.  She wished——­The wrinkle deepened on her brow.  Too much London was bad for him!  Too much——­Her fancy flew to the London which she saw now only for three weeks in June and July, for the sake of the girls, just when her garden was at its best, and when really things were such a whirl that she never knew whether she was asleep or awake.  It was not like London at all—­not like that London under spring skies, or in early winter lamplight, where all the passers-by seemed so interesting, living all sorts of strange and eager lives, with strange and eager pleasures, running all sorts of risks, hungry sometimes, homeless even—­so fascinating, so unlike—­