She desired to speak privately with Mildred Vesper, and opportunity might have been made, but, as part of her scheme of self-subdual, this conversation was postponed until the second week.  It took place one evening when work was over.

‘I have been wanting to ask you,’ Rhoda began, ’whether you have any news of Mrs. Widdowson.’

’I wrote to her not long ago, and she answered from a new address.  She said she had left her husband and would never go back to him.’

Rhoda nodded gravely.

‘Then what I had heard was true.  You haven’t seen her?’

‘She asked me not to come.  She is living with her sister.’

‘Did she give you any reason for the separation from her husband?’

‘None,’ answered Mildred.  ’But she said it was no secret; that every one knew.  That’s why I haven’t spoken to you about it—­as I should have done otherwise after our last conversation.’

‘The fact is no secret,’ said Rhoda coldly.  ’But why will she offer no explanation?’

Mildred shook her head, signifying inability to make any satisfactory reply, and there the dialogue ended; for Rhoda could not proceed in it without appearing to encourage scandal.  The hope of eliciting some suggestive information had failed; but whether Mildred had really disclosed all she knew seemed doubtful.

At the end of the week Miss Barfoot left home for her own holiday; she was going to Scotland, and would be away for nearly the whole of September.  At this time of the year the work in Great Portland Street was very light; not much employment offered for the typewriters, and the pupils numbered only about half a dozen.  Nevertheless, it pleased Rhoda to have the establishment under her sole direction; she desired authority, and by magnifying the importance of that which now fell into her hands, she endeavoured to sustain herself under the secret misery which, for all her efforts, weighed no less upon her as time went on.  It was a dreary make-believe.  On the first night of solitude at Chelsea she shed bitter tears; and not only wept, but agonized in mute frenzy, the passions of her flesh torturing her until she thought of death as a refuge.  Now she whispered the name of her lover with every word and phrase of endearment that her heart could suggest; the next moment she cursed him with the fury of deadliest hatred.  In the half-delirium of sleeplessness, she revolved wild, impossible schemes for revenging herself, or, as the mood changed, all but resolved to sacrifice everything to her love, to accuse herself of ignoble jealousy and entreat forgiveness.  Of many woeful nights this was the worst she had yet suffered.