“I’d rather speak later,” urged Montague gloomily, to add, “It never rains but it pours.”

“Why do you say that?” asked his wife quickly.

“I’d a letter from Charlie Perigal this mornin’.”

“Where from?”

“The same Earl’s Court private hotel.  He wants somethin’ to do.”

“Something to do!” cried the two sisters together.

“His father hasn’t done for him what he led me to believe he would,” explained Devitt gloomily.

“You can find him something?” suggested Miss Spraggs.

“And, till you do, I’d better ask them to stay down here,” said his wife.

“That part of it’s all right,” remarked Devitt.  “But somehow I don’t think Charlie—–­”

“What?” interrupted Mrs Devitt.

“Is much of a hand at work,” replied her husband.

No one said anything for a few minutes.

Mrs Devitt spoke next.

“I’m scarcely surprised at Major Perigal’s refusal to do anything for Charles,” she remarked.

“Why?” asked her husband.

“Can you ask?”

“You mean all that business with poor Mavis Keeves?”

“I mean all that business, as you call it, with that abandoned creature whom we were so misguided as to assist.”

Devitt said nothing; he was well used to his wife’s emphatic views on the subject—­views which were endorsed by her sister.

“The whole thing was too distressing for words,” she continued.  “I’d have broken off the marriage, even at the last moment, for Charles’s share in it, but for the terrible scandal which would have been caused.”

“Well, well; it’s all over and done with now,” sighed Devitt.

“I’m not so sure; one never knows what an abandoned girl, as Miss Keeves has proved herself to be, is capable of!”

“True!” remarked Miss Spraggs.

“Come! come!” said Devitt.  “The poor girl was at the point of death for weeks after her baby died.”

“What of that?” asked his wife.

“Girls who suffer like that aren’t so very bad.”

“You take her part, as you’ve always done.  She’s hopelessly bad, and I’m as convinced as I’m sitting here that it was she who led poor Charlie astray.”

“It’s all very unfortunate,” said Devitt moodily.

“And we all but had her in the house,” urged Mrs Devitt, much irritated at her husband’s tacit support of the girl.

“Anyway, she’s far away from us now,” said Devitt.

“Where has she gone?” asked Miss Spraggs.

“Somewhere in Dorsetshire,” Devitt informed her.

“If she hadn’t gone, I should have made it my duty to urge her to leave Melkbridge,” remarked Mrs Devitt.

“She’s not so bad as all that,” declared Devitt.

“I can’t understand why men stand up for loose women,” said his wife.

“She’s not a loose woman:  far from it.  If she were, Windebank would not be so interested in her.”