She sighed and wiped her eyes.  Still Tavernake said nothing.  She looked at him, a little surprised.

“You are not very sympathetic,” she observed.  “Please come and sit down by my side and I will show you something.”

He moved towards her but he did not sit down.  She stretched out her hand and picked something up from the table, holding it towards him.  Tavernake took it mechanically and held it in his fingers.  It was a cheque for twelve thousand pounds.

“You see,” she said, “I have not forgotten.  This is the day, isn’t it?  If you like, you can stay and have lunch with me up here and we will drink to the success of our speculation.”

Tavernake held the cheque in his fingers; he made no motion to put it in his pocket.  She looked at him with a puzzled frown upon her face.

“Do talk or say something, please!” she exclaimed.  “You look at me like some grim figure.  Say something.  Sit down and be natural.”

“May I ask you some questions?”

“Of course you may,” she replied.  “You may do anything sooner than stand there looking so grim and unbending.  What is it you want to know?”

“Did you understand that Wenham Gardner was this sort of man when you married him?”

She shrugged her shoulders slightly.

“I suppose I did,” she admitted.

“You married him, then, only because he was rich?”

She smiled.

“What else do women marry for, my dear moralist?” she demanded.  “It isn’t my fault if it doesn’t sound pretty.  One must have money!”

Tavernake inclined his head gravely; he made no sign of dissent.

“You two came over to England,” he went on, “with Beatrice and your father.  Beatrice left you because she disapproved of certain things.”

Elizabeth nodded.

“You may as well know the truth,” she said.  “Beatrice has the most absurd ideas.  After a week with Wenham, I knew that he was not a person with whom any woman could possibly live.  His valet was really only his keeper; he was subject to such mad fits that he needed some one always with him.  I was obliged to leave him in Cornwall.  I can’t tell you everything, but it was absolutely impossible for me to go on living with him.”

“Beatrice,” Tavernake remarked, “thought otherwise.”

Elizabeth looked at him quickly from below her eyelids.  It was hard, however, to gather anything from his face.

“Beatrice thought otherwise,” Elizabeth admitted.  “She thought that I ought to nurse him, put up with him, give up all my friends, and try and keep him alive.  Why, it would have been absolute martyrdom, misery for me,” she declared.  “How could I be expected to do such a thing?”

Tavernake nodded gravely.

“And the money?” he asked.

“Well, perhaps there I was a trifle calculating,” she confessed.  “But you,” she added, nodding at the cheque in his hand, “shouldn’t grumble at that.  I knew when we were married that I should have trouble.  His people hated me, and I knew that in the event of anything happening like this thing which has happened, they would try to get as little as possible allowed me.  So before we left New York, I got Wenham to turn as much as ever he could into cash.  That we brought away with us.”