could forget everything.  I know her explanation won’t satisfy me.  Whatever it is I shall still suspect her.  I don’t know that the child is mine.  It may be.  Perhaps as it grows up there will be a likeness to help me to make sure.  But what a life!  Every paltry trifle will make me uneasy; and if I discovered any fresh deceit I should do something terrible.  You don’t know how near I was—­’

He shuddered and hid his face.

‘The Othello business won’t do,’ said Lady Horrocks not unkindly.  ’You couldn’t have gone on together, of course; you had to part for a time.  Well, that’s all over; take it as something that couldn’t be helped.  You were behaving absurdly, you know; I told you plainly; I guessed there’d be trouble.  You oughtn’t to have married at all, that’s the fact; it would be better for most of us if we kept out of it.  Some marry for a good reason, some for a bad, and mostly it all comes to the same in the end.  But there, never mind.  Pull yourself together, dear boy.  It’s all nonsense about not caring for her.  Of course you’re eating your heart out for want of her.  And I’ll tell you what I think:  it’s very likely Monica was pulled up just in time by discovering—­you understand?—­that she was more your wife than any one else’s.  Something tells me that’s how it was.  Just try to look at it in that way.  If the child lives she’ll be different.  She has sowed her wild oats—­why shouldn’t a woman as well as a man?  Go down to Clevedon and forgive her.  You’re an honest man, and it isn’t every woman—­never mind.  I could tell you stories about people—­but you wouldn’t care to hear them.  Just take things with a laugh—­we all have to.  Life’s as you take it:  all gloom or moderately shiny.’

With much more to the same solacing effect.  For the time Widdowson was perchance a trifle comforted; at all events, he went away with a sense of gratitude to Lady Horrocks.  And when he had left the house he remembered that not even a civil formality with regard to Sir William had fallen from his lips.  But Sir William’s wife, for whatever reason, had also not once mentioned the baronet’s name.

* * *

Only a few days passed before Widdowson received the summons he was expecting.  It came in the form of a telegram, bidding him hasten to his wife; not a word of news added.  At the time of its arrival he was taking his afternoon walk; this delay made it doubtful whether he could get to Paddington by six-twenty, the last train which would enable him to reach Clevedon that night.  He managed it, with only two or three minutes to spare.

Not till he was seated in the railway carriage could he fix his thoughts on the end of the journey.  An inexpressible repugnance then affected him; he would have welcomed any disaster to the train, any injury which might prevent his going to Monica at such a time.  Often, in anticipation, the event which was now come to pass had confused and darkened his mind; he loathed the thought of it.  If the child, perhaps already born, were in truth his, it must be very long before he could regard it with a shadow of paternal interest; uncertainty, to which he was condemned, would in all likelihood make it an object of aversion to him as long as he lived.