Every moment of these black days had affected Jane like a stymie on the last green. She could not understand how it was that William should have come to suspect, but that he did suspect was plain; and she writhed on the horns of a dilemma. All she had to do to win him back again was to go to him and tell him of Anastatia’s fatal entanglement. But what would happen then? Undoubtedly he would feel it his duty as a brother to warn the girl against Rodney Spelvin; and Jane instinctively knew that William warning any one against Rodney Spelvin would sound like a private of the line giving his candid opinion of the sergeant-major. Inevitably, in this case, Anastatia, a spirited girl and deeply in love, would take offence at his words and leave the house. And if she left the house, what would be the effect on little Braid’s mashie-play? Already, in less than a fortnight, the gifted girl had taught him more about the chip-shot from ten to fifteen yards off the green than the local pro. had been able to do in two years. Her departure would be absolutely disastrous. What it amounted to was that she must sacrifice her husband’s happiness or her child’s future; and the problem of which was to get the loser’s end was becoming daily more insoluble. She was still brooding on it when the postman arrived with the evening mail, and the maid brought the letters into the drawing-room. Jane sorted them out. There were three for William, which she gave to the maid to take to him in his den. There were two for herself, both bills. And there was one for Anastatia, in the well-remembered handwriting of Rodney Spelvin. Jane placed this letter on the mantel-piece, and stood looking at it like a cat at a canary. Anastatia was away for the day, visiting friends who lived a few stations down the line; and every womanly instinct in Jane urged her to get hold of a kettle and steam the gum off the envelope. She had almost made up her mind to disembowel the thing and write “Opened in error” on it, when the telephone suddenly went off like a bomb and nearly startled her into a decline. Coming at that moment it sounded like the Voice of Conscience. “Hullo?” said Jane. “Hullo!” replied a voice. Jane clucked like a hen with uncontrollable emotion. It was Rodney. “Is that you?” asked Rodney “Yes,” said Jane. And so it was, she told herself. “Your voice is like music,” said Rodney. This may or may not have been the case, but at any rate it was exactly like every other female voice when heard on the telephone. Rodney prattled on without a suspicion. “Have you got my letter yet?” “No,” said Jane. She hesitated. “What was in it?” she asked, tremulously. “It was to ask you to come to my house to-morrow at four.” “To your house!” faltered Jane. “Yes. Everything is ready. I will send the servants out, so that we shall be quite alone. You will come, won’t you?” The room was shimmering before Jane’s eyes, but she regained command of herself with a strong effort.