“Give me half an hour,” she said to the sullen Gunner.  “I’ll make it well worth your while.”  She then went upstairs to kiss her baby before setting out.

“Where are you going, ma’am?” asked tearful Mrs Trivett, who had followed her upstairs.

“To Mr Devitt.  He’s kind at heart.  I know, if I can see him, he’ll give me what I want.”

“But will he see you?”

“I’ll see to that.  Promise you won’t leave baby while I’m gone.”

Mavis took a last look of her darling as she went out of the door.  She then let herself out and sped in the direction of the Bathminster Road.  She scarcely knew, she did not care, what she should say when she came face to face with Devitt.  She had almost forgotten that he had been informed of her secret.  All she knew was that she was in peril of losing her sick child, and that she was fighting for its possession with the weapons that came handiest.  Nothing else in the world was of the smallest account.  She also dimly realised that she was fighting for her lover’s approval, to whom she would soon have to render an account of her stewardship to his son.  This gave edge to her determination.  She knocked at the door of the brightly lit, pretentious-looking house in the Bathminster Road.

“I want to see Mr Devitt privately,” she told the fat butler who opened the door.

He would have shown her into a room, but she preferred to wait in the hall, which, just now, was littered with trunks.

“I think he’s with Mr Harold,” said the man, as he walked to a door at the further end of the hall.

The trunk labels were written in a firm, bold hand, which caught Mavis’s eye.  “Harold Devitt, Esq., Homeleigh, Swanage, Dorset,” was the apparent destination of the luggage.

“Mr Devitt must be in the drawing-room,” said Hayter, as he reappeared to walk up the stairs.

Mavis, scarcely knowing what she was doing, followed the man up the heavily carpeted stairs, which did not betray her footfalls.

The man opened the door of the drawing-room.

As she followed close on his heels, she heard a terrific peal at the front door bell.  Recollection of what she saw in the drawing-room is burned into Mavis’s memory and will remain there till her last moment of consciousness.

Montague Devitt, in evening dress, was lolling before the fireplace.  His wife and her sister were busily engaged in unpacking showy articles from boxes, which Mavis divined to be wedding gifts.  Victoria Devitt, sumptuously dressed, was seated on a low chair.  Bending over her shoulder in an attitude of unconcealed devotion was Charlie Perigal.

Mavis took in the significance of all that she saw at a glance.  Her blood went ice cold.  Something snapped in her head.  She opened her lips to speak, but no words issued.  Instead, one arm was uplifted to accuse.  Then she became rigid; only her eyes were eloquent.