Devitt could not have said anything more calculated to anger the two women.

Miss Spraggs threw down her pen, whilst Mrs Devitt became white.

“She must be bad to have fascinated Sir Archibald as she has done,” she declared.

“Windebank is no fool,” urged her husband.

“I suppose the next thing we shall hear is that she’s living under his protection,” cried Mrs Devitt.

“In St John’s Wood,” added Miss Spraggs, whose information on such matters was thirty years behind the times.

“More likely he’ll marry her,” remarked Devitt.

“What!” cried the two women.

“I believe he’d give his eyes to get her,” the man continued.

“He’s only to ask,” snapped Miss Spraggs.

“Anyway, we shall see,” said Devitt.

“Should that happen, I trust you will never wish me to invite her to the house,” said Mrs Devitt, rising to her full height.

“It’s all very sad,” remarked Devitt gloomily.

“It is:  that you should take her part in the way you do, Montague,” retorted his wife.

“I’m sorry if you’re upset,” her husband replied.  “But I knew Miss Keeves as a little girl, when she was always laughin’ and happy.  It’s all very, very sad.”

Mrs Devitt moved to a window, where she stood staring out at the foliage which, just now, was looking self-conscious in its new finery.

“Who heard from Harold last?” asked Devitt presently.

“I did,” replied Miss Spraggs.  “It was on Tuesday he wrote.”

“How did he write?”

“Quite light-heartedly.  He has now for some weeks:  such a change for him.”

“H’m!”

“Why do you ask?” said Mrs Devitt.

“I saw Pritchett when I was in town yesterday.”

“Harold’s doctor?” queried Miss Spraggs.

“He told me he’d seen Harold last week.”

“At Swanage?”

“Harold had wired for him.  I wondered if anythin’ was up.”

“What should be ‘up,’ as you call it, beyond his being either better or worse?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, that it was more from Pritchett’s manner than from anything else that I gathered somethin’ had happened.”

“So long as he’s well, there’s nothing to worry about,” said Mrs Devitt reassuringly.

The late afternoon post brought a letter for Montague from his son Harold.  This told his father that a supreme happiness had come in his life; that, by great good fortune, he had met and quietly married Mavis Keeves; that, by her wish, the marriage had been kept a secret for three weeks; it ended by saying how he hoped to bring his wife to his father’s house early in the following week.  Montague Devitt stared stupidly at the paper on which this information was conveyed; then he leaned against the mantelpiece for support.  He looked as if he had been struck brutally and unexpectedly between the eyes.  “Montague!  Montague!” cried his wife, as she noticed his distress.