Mavis made no allowance for the man’s natural delicacy for her feelings, which he considered must have been cruelly harrowed by all she had lately suffered.  Just now, there was no room in her world for the more delicate susceptibilities of emotion.  She wholly misjudged him, and the more she thought of it, the more she believed that his letter was dictated by pity rather than love.  This pity irked her pride and made her disinclined to accept his offer.

Then Mavis thought of Major Perigal’s letter.  It flattered her to think how her personality appealed to those of her own social kind.  She began to realise what a desirable wife she would have made if it had not been for her meeting and subsequent attachment to Charlie Perigal.  Any man, Windebank, but for this experience, would have been proud to have made her his wife.  She believed that her whole-hearted devotion to a worthless man had for ever cut her off from love, wifehood, motherhood—­things for which her being starved.  Then she tried to fathom the why and wherefore of it all.  She had always tried to do right:  in situations where events were foreign to her control, she had trusted to her Heavenly Father for protection.  “Why was it,” she asked herself, “that her lot had not been definitely thrown in with Windebank before she had met with Charles Perigal?  Why?” Such was her resentment at the ordering of events, that she set her teeth and banged her clenched fist upon the arm of her chair.

At that moment the crippled man wheeled himself past the house on his self-propelled tricycle.  He looked intently at the window of the room that Mavis occupied.  At the same moment Mrs Budd came into the room to ask what Mavis would like for luncheon.

“Who is that passing?” asked Mavis.

The old woman ran lightly to the window.

“The gentleman on that machine?”

“Yes.  I’ve often seen him about.”

“It’s Mr Harold Devitt, miss.”

“Harold Devitt!  Where does he come from?” asked Mavis of Mrs Budd, who had a genius for gleaning the gossip of the place.

“Melkbridge.  He’s the eldest son of Mr Montague Devitt, a very rich gentleman.  Mr Harold lives at Mrs Buck’s with a male nurse to look after him, poor fellow.”

Mrs Budd went on talking, but Mavis did not hear what she was saying.  Mention of the name of Devitt was the spark that set alight a raging conflagration in her being.  She had lost a happy married life with Windebank, to be as she now was, entirely owing to the Devitts.  Now it was all plain enough—­so plain that she wondered how she had not seen it before.  It was the selfish action of the Devitts, who wished to secure Windebank for their daughter, which had prevented Montague from giving Mavis the message that Windebank had given to him.  It was the Devitts who had not taken her into their house, because they feared how she might meet Windebank in Melkbridge.  It was the Devitts who had given her work in a boot