“I won’t say that it doesn’t hurt,” she took him up: “it does. Or, no, it doesn’t. Well, one can’t say.... Up in the nursery at the Brigstocks’ there were great big clumsy boys. They adored me, and it was my business to make men of them--at any rate, during the holidays. Well, they’d disobey me. Sometimes they’d even deceive me--rather meanly, in little things; and then they’d behave like Dudley. So that I’m used to it on a small scale. It’s saddening that a man can’t be quite true, even when he adores you; but he can’t. That’s all.” She was buttoning up her little black gloves, and she stood up to go. “Wouldn’t you like me,” Grimshaw asked, “to break it to him that you know? I suppose he’s got to know it?” “Of course he’s got to know it,” she said. “He’ll never be himself as long as he’s trying to conceal it. But ... I think I’ll tell him myself. You see, he might not like you to know; it might make him shy. It’s best to drink one’s own black draughts.” But when she reached the door she turned to say: “You might come along soon--quite soon. I shan’t say more than three words to him. Your coming in might relieve any strain. It would carry us over till bedtime.” “I’ll be there well before lunch,” he said. “It’s twelve now.” As they stood on the doorstep, he taking his farewell, she brought out: “Mind, nobody’s to blame but me, from the beginning. If it hadn’t been for mother, I don’t suppose I should have married Dudley. I knew I could make a good wife for him; I know I can make a man of him, and I know he adores me. But that isn’t everything. I can put him into the sort of position he ought to occupy. But that’s only being a nursery governess on a larger scale. It’s a good piece of work.... But--but for mother ... oh, poor dear!”--she broke off, and the blue eyes that gazed down the empty street were filmed over for a moment--“much it has profited mother to have me off her hands. It’s five months now, and she’s been dead thirteen days. Well, so long.” She waved her hand minutely to him from the pavement, and exclaimed: “Go in; you’ll take cold!” and then she seemed to be blown round the corner into Curzon Street. III IN passing from the dining-room to his snuggery at the back of the house, Dudley Leicester brushed against his tall hat. He took it from the rack, and surveyed distastefully its ruffled surface. “Saunders,” he called, “take this round to Tang’s. They’re to put a band on it a half-inch deeper, and to iron it. I hate a hat that’s been ruffled.” “It _does_ mark a man off, sir,” Saunders said from the dining-room door. Saunders had been considering with his master the question of dark shades in trousering, and the colloquial atmosphere seemed to remain in the air. “Now, what the devil do you mean by that?” Leicester asked. “Do you mean it would help you to track him?”