Maud looked at Mrs. Vereker--she felt a burning wish to go, and needed but the faintest encouragement. Felicia would, she knew, be not well pleased; but then it was George's fault that she was unprovided for, and it seemed hardly good-natured to reject so easy an escape from the embarrassment which his carelessness had produced. 'I would come and sit in the back seat, to make it proper,' cried Mrs. Vereker, 'but that I am afraid of the sun. I tell you what: I will drive, and you can sit in the back seat, Mr. Desvoeux; that will do capitally.' 'Thank you,' said Desvoeux, with the most melancholy attempt at politeness and his face sinking to zero. 'Indeed, that is impossible!' cried Maud. 'I know you want to stay at home. I will go with Mr. Desvoeux.' And go accordingly they did, and on the way home Desvoeux became, as was but natural, increasingly confidential. 'This is my carriage,' he explained, 'for driving married ladies in: you see there is a seat behind--very far behind--and well railed off, to put the husbands in and keep them in their proper place--quite in the background. It is so disagreeable when they lean over and try to join in the conversation; and people never know when they are _de trop_.' 'Ah, but,' said Maud, 'I don't like driving with you alone. I hear you are a very terrible person. People give you a very bad character.' 'I know,' answered her companion; 'girls are always jilting me and treating me horribly badly, and then they say that it is all my fault. I dare say they have been telling you about Miss Fotheringham's affair, and making me out a monster; but it was she that was alone to blame.' 'Indeed,' said Maud, 'I heard that it made her very ill, and she had to be sent to England, to be kept out of a consumption.' 'This was how it was,' said Desvoeux; 'I adored her--quite adored her; I thought her an angel, and I think her one still, but with one defect--a sort of frantic jealousy, quite a mania. Well, I had a friend--it happened to be a lady--for whom I had all the feelings of a brother. We had corresponded for years. I had sent her innumerable notes, letters, flowers, presents, you know. I had a few things that she had given me--a note or two, a glove, a flower, a photograph, perhaps--just the sort of thing, you know, that one sends----' 'To one's brother,' put in Maud. 'Yes; I know exactly.'