‘It’s more the shame than anything else, that I fear now,’ said Nancy.  ’If I have to support myself and my child, I shall do it.  How, I don’t know; but other women find a way, and I should.  If he deserts me, I am not such a poor creature as to grieve on that account; I should despise him too much even to hate him.  But the shame of it would be terrible.  It’s common, vulgar cheating—­such as you read of in the newspapers—­such as people are punished for.  I never thought of it in that way when he was here.  Yet he felt it.  He spoke of it like that, but I wouldn’t listen.’

Mary heard this with interest.

‘Did he wish you to give it up?’ she asked.  ’You never told me that.’

’He said he would rather we did.  But that was when he had never thought of being in want himself.  Afterwards—­yes, even then he spoke in the same way; but what could we do?’

‘Don’t fear that he will forsake you,’ said Mary.  ’You will hear from him very soon.  He knows the right and the wrong, and right will be stronger with him in the end.’

’If only I were sure that he has heard of his child’s birth.  If he has, and won’t even write to me, then he is no man, and it’s better we should never see each other again.’

She knew the hours of postal delivery, and listened with throbbing heart to the double knocks at neighbouring houses.  When the last postman was gone by, she sat down, sick with disappointment.

At bedtime she said to Mary, ’My little baby is asleep; oh, if I could but see it for a moment!’ And tears choked her as she turned away.

It was more than two months since she had heard from her husband.

At first Tarrant wrote as frequently as he had promised.  She learnt speedily of his arrival at New York, then that he had reached Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, then that he was with his friend Sutherland on the little island amid the coral reefs.  Subsequent letters, written in buoyant spirits, contained long descriptions of the scenery about him, and of the life he led.  He expressed a firm confidence in Sutherland’s enterprises; beyond a doubt, there was no end of money to be made by an energetic man; he should report most favourably to Mr. Vawdrey, whose co-operation would of course be invaluable.  For his own part, whether he profited or not from these commercial schemes, he had not been mistaken in foreseeing material for journalism, even for a book.  Yes, he should certainly write a book on the Bahamas, if only to expose the monstrous system of misgovernment which accounted for the sterility into which these islands had fallen.  The climate, in winter at all events, was superb.  Sutherland and he lay about in delicious sunshine, under a marvellous sky, smoking excellent cigars, and talking over old Oxford days.  He quoted Tennyson:  ‘Larger constellations burning,’ &c.