Devitt scarcely spoke whilst driving Mavis home; consequently, her thoughts had free play.  It would certainly ease her mind, she reflected, if she made full confession to her husband of the reasons that impelled her to make his acquaintance and accept his offer of marriage; but it then occurred to her that this tranquillity of soul would be bought at the price, not only of his implicit faith in her, but of his happiness.  Therefore, whatever pangs of remorse it was destined for her to suffer, he must never know; she being the offender, it was not meet that she should shift the burden of pain from her shoulders to his.  Her sufferings were her punishment for her wrongdoing.

Mrs Devitt and Miss Spraggs were silent when they learned of Mavis’s good fortune; they were torn between enhanced respect for Harold’s wife and concern for Victoria, who had married a penniless man.  Mavis could not gauge the effect of the news on Victoria, as she had gone back to London after Major Perigal’s funeral, her husband remaining at Melkbridge for the reading of the will.  Harold, alone among the Devitts, exhibited frank dismay at his wife’s good fortune.

“Aren’t you glad, dearest?” asked Mavis.

“For your sake.”

“Why not for yours?”

“It’s the thing most likely to separate us.”

“Separate us!” she cried in amazement.

“Why not?  This money will put you in the place in life you are entitled to fill.”

Mavis stared at him in astonishment.

“With your appearance and talents you should be a great social success with the people who matter,” he continued.

“Nonsense!”

“You undervalue your wonderful self.  I should never have been so selfish as to marry you.”

“You don’t regret it?”

“For the great happiness it has brought me—­no.  But when I think how you might have made a great marriage and had a real home—­”

“Aren’t we going to have a real home?” she interrupted.

“Are we?”

“If it’s love that makes the home, we have one whatever our condition,” declared Mavis.

“Thank you for saying that.  But what I meant was that children are wanted to make the perfect home.”

Mavis’s face fell.

“You, with your rare nature, must want to have a child,” he continued.  “I don’t know which must be worse:  for a childless woman to long for a child or to have one and lose it.”

Mavis grasped the arm of the chair for support.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, alarmed.

“What you said.  Don’t, don’t say I’m dissatisfied any more.”

Thus Mavis and those nearest to her learned of the alteration in her fortunes.