“You seem to forget,” still feeling that convincing loftiness was not easy, “that when a man leaves his wife, or she deserts him, it is she who is likely to be called upon to bear the onus of public opinion.”

“Would she be called upon to bear it under all circumstances?”

“Damned clever woman as you are, you know that she would, as well as I know it.”  He made an abrupt gesture with his hand.  “You know that what I say is true.  Women who take to their heels are deucedly unpopular in England.”

“I have not been long in England, but I have been struck by the prevalence of a sort of constitutional British sense of fair play among the people who really count.  The Dunholms, for instance, have it markedly.  In America it is the men who force women to take to their heels who are deucedly unpopular.  The Americans’ sense of fair play is their most English quality.  It was brought over in ships by the first colonists—­like the pieces of fine solid old furniture, one even now sees, here and there, in houses in Virginia.”

“But the fact remains,” said Nigel, with an unpleasant laugh, “the fact remains, my dear girl.”

“The fact that does remain,” said Betty, not unpleasantly at all, and still with her gentle air of mere unprejudiced speculation, “is that, if a man or woman is properly ill-treated—­properly—­not in any amateurish way—­they reach the point of not caring in the least—­nothing matters, but that they must get away from the horror of the unbearable thing —­never to see or hear of it again is heaven enough to make anything else a thing to smile at.  But one could settle the other point by experimenting.  Suppose you run away from Rosy, and then we can see if she is cut by the county.”

His laugh was unpleasant again.

“So long as you are with her, she will not be cut.  There are a number of penniless young men of family in this, as well as the adjoining, counties.  Do you think Mount Dunstan would cut her?”

She looked down at the carpet thoughtfully a moment, and then lifted her eyes.

“I do not think so,” she answered.  “But I will ask him.”

He was startled by a sudden feeling that she might be capable of it.

“Oh, come now,” he said, “that goes beyond a joke.  You will not do any such absurd thing.  One does not want one’s domestic difficulties discussed by one’s neighbours.”

Betty opened coolly surprised eyes.

“I did not understand it was a personal matter,” she remarked.  “Where do the domestic difficulties come in?”

He stared at her a few seconds with the look she did not like, which was less likeable at the moment, because it combined itself with other things.

“Hang it,” he muttered.  “I wish I could keep my temper as you can keep yours,” and he turned on his heel and left the room.