’She has been visiting here and there for the last month; now her mother wants her to go to Ventnor.  Much better she shouldn’t; they hate each other —­ can’t be together a day without quarrelling.  Pretty plain on which side the fault lies.  I shouldn’t think there are many women better tempered than Sibyl.  All the time we’ve been married, and all we’ve gone through, I have never once seen an unpleasant look on her face —­ to me, that is.  It’s something to be able to say that.  Mrs. Larkfield is simply intolerable.  She’s always either whining or in a fury.  Can’t talk of anything but the loss of her money.’

‘That reminds me,’ interposed Harvey.  ’Do you know that there seems to be a chance of getting something out of the great wreck?’

‘What?  Who says so?’

’Mrs. Frothingham.  The creditors come first, of course.  Was your wife creditor or shareholder?’

‘Why, both.’

’Then she may hear something before long.  I don’t pretend to understand the beastly affair, but Mrs. Frothingham wrote to us about it the day before yesterday, with hints of eighteenpence in the pound, which she seemed to think very glorious.’

Carnaby growled in disgust.

’Eighteenpence be damned!  Well, perhaps it’ll buy her a hat.  I tell you, Rolfe, when I compare Sibyl with her mother, I almost feel she’s too good for the world.  Suppose she had turned out that sort of woman!  What would have been the end of it?  Murder, most likely.  But she bore the loss of all her money just as she did the loss of her jewellery and things when our house was burgled —­ never turned a hair.  There’s a girl to be proud of, I tell you!’

He insisted upon it so vehemently that one might have imagined him in conflict with secret doubts as to his wife’s perfection.

‘It’s a very strange thing,’ said Rolfe, looking at his wine, ’that those thieves got clean away —­ not a single thing they stole ever tracked.  There can’t be many such cases.’

‘I have a theory about that.’  Hugh half-closed his eyes, looking at once shrewd and fierce.  ’The woman herself —­ the housekeeper —­ is at this moment going about in society, somewhere.  She was no Whitechapel thief.  There’s a gang organised among the people we live with.  If I go out to dine, as likely as not I sit next to a burglar or a forger, or anything you like.  The police never get on the scent, and it’s the same in many another robbery.  Some day, perhaps, there’ll be an astounding disclosure, a blazing hell of a scandal —­ a dozen men and women marched from Belgravia and Mayfair to Newgate.  I’m sure of it!  What else can you expect of such a civilisation as ours?  Well, I should know that woman again, and if ever I find myself taking her down to dinner ——­’

Harvey exploded in laughter.