‘They have met,’ repeated the other, musingly, her face still rather anxious.  ‘In what way?’

‘By chance, pure chance.’

’By chance?  It was not, I suppose, by chance that you heard of the meeting?’

‘No.  Wilfrid told me of it.  He told me on Sunday—­’

Her voice was a little uncertain.

‘Give me your hand, dear,’ said Mrs. Baxendale.  ’There, now tell me the rest.’

Beatrice half sobbed.

‘Yes, I can now more easily,’ she continued, with hurried utterance.  ’Your hand is just what I wanted; it is help, dear help.  But you mustn’t think I am weak; I could have stood alone.  Yes, he told me on Sunday.  And that of course was the end.’

‘At his desire?’

’His and mine.  He was honest with me.  It was better than such discoveries when it would have been too late.’

‘And he is going to marry her?’

‘They were married an hour ago.’

Mrs. Baxendale looked with grave inquiry into Beatrice’s face.  Incredulity was checked by what she saw there.  She averted her eyes again, and both were silent for awhile.

‘So it is all well over, you see,’ Beatrice said at length, trying at light-heartedness.

‘Over, it seems.  As to the well or ill, I can’t say.’

‘Surely well,’ rejoined Beatrice.  ’He loves her, and he would never have loved me.  We can’t help it.  She has suffered dreadful things; you see it in her face.’

‘Her face?’

‘I went to see her on Monday evening,’ Beatrice explained, with simplicity, though her lips quivered.  ’I asked leave of Wilfrid to do so; he had told me all her story, as be had just heard it from herself, and I—­indeed I was curious to see her again.  Then there was another reason.  If I saw her and brought her to believe that Wilfrid and I were merely intimate friends, as we used to be—­how much easier it would make everything.  You understand me, aunt?’

Mrs. Baxendale was again looking at her with grave, searching eyes, eyes which began to glimmer a little when the light caught them.  Beatrice’s hand she held pressed more and more closely in both her own.  She made no reply to the last question, and the speaker went on with a voice which lost its clearness, and seemed to come between parched lips.

’You see how easy that makes everything?  I want your help, of course; I told Wilfrid that this was how I should act.  It is very simple; let us say that I prefer to be thought an unselfish woman:  anyone can be jealous and malicious.  You are to think that I care as little as it would seem; I don’t yet know how I am to live, but of course I shall, it will come in time.  It was better they should be married in this way.  Then he must come back after the holidays, and everything be smooth for him.  That will be our work, yours and mine, dear aunt.  You understand me?  You will talk to Mrs. Birks; it will be better from you; and then