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had been rude. I didn’t mean to be and I beg your pardon.’

So unexpected were these words, so astonishing to Monica’s ear, that for a moment she felt that Hester had struck her between the eyes. She stood there stunned. Then, as the singing in her head subsided, she saw a clue given into her hand. Hester suspected nothing and, because she was unsuspicious, might reveal everything. Her apology was part of her plot. How little it could cost her to apologize to Clive’s mother when she had everything to gain by keeping him quiet. It was of Clive she was thinking. She would never dream, Monica was sure of that as she looked at her, of casting him off. She intended to keep husband and lover. Monica felt herself armed and she seized her opportunity. ‘That’s very nice of you, Hester, very nice indeed,’ she said; ‘I was rather startled.’ And she went on, not too casually—for of course Hester would see that she intended to make herself disagreeable: ‘But really—after what Clive told me, I perfectly understand. It wasn’t really me you were angry with at all, was it?—though of course at the moment I could not be expected to see that’

Hester’s eye lighted from its brooding calm. It fixed itself on her mother-in-law and the sullen,