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about things like that. She used to brave father and go to stay with Mrs. Ingpen, in Sussex, and once when I was in London at a concert with mother I saw her. Very pretty; too pretty; very much made up and very peevish; but, as mother said, one couldn’t wonder at that; Uncle Godfrey led her such a life.’

‘Oh, dear!—He was not faithful to her—after all that she had braved for him?’

‘Anything but faithful. I will say, from my glimpse of her, that she struck me as the sort of woman a man might make love to but not at all the sort he would care to marry. The wistful siren type, you know; I can’t stand them. I don’t think mother was really very fond of her:—only very sorry. Anyway he made her miserable and she wouldn’t divorce him.’

‘Swept away: broken: everything fades,’ thought Monica. ‘Did she go on caring for him, then?’ she asked.

‘I suppose she did. Mother said she always believed he would come back if she held on. But he never did come back and she died a year or two ago, still holding.’

‘Poor woman,’ said Monica.

‘Yes, poor woman; but it’s rather mean all the