Again she told herself that she was wasting what remained to her of youth and of vitality over a thoroughly unsatisfactory state of things, and painfully she determined that, if what she had gradually come to plan since her return home did not come to pass, she would leave Rosedean, and make another life for herself elsewhere. * * * * * The things Katty toiled and schemed for had a way of coming to pass. She had planned her divorce long before it had actually taken place, at a time indeed when it seemed impossible to believe that it ever could take place. Bob Winslow had been adoringly, slavishly devoted to her for more than two-thirds of their married life, and it had taken her trouble and time to drive him into the courses it was necessary he should pursue to procure her freedom. She had no doubt--there could be no doubt--that were Godfrey free he would turn to her instinctively at once. She was well aware of her power over him, and till lately she had been virtuously proud of what she imagined to be her loyalty to Laura. Also she had had no wish to make her own position at Rosedean untenable. Even as it was, Godfrey came far too often to see her. Had she lived nearer to Pewsbury, even a mile nearer, his frequent calls on her would have meant a flood of ill-natured gossip in the little town. Yes, the situation, from Katty's point of view, was thoroughly unsatisfactory, and, as far as she was concerned, it was time it was ended or mended. And then, once more, for the hundredth time, her restless, excited mind swung back to what was to her just now the real mystery, the all-important problem--the relations between Oliver Tropenell and Laura Pavely. Of course it was possible--though Katty thought not likely--that Tropenell was still unaware of his passion for Laura. Perhaps he still disguised it under the name of "friendship." But even if that were so, such a state of things could not endure for very long. Any day some trifling happening might open his eyes, and, yes--why not?--Godfrey's. CHAPTER VIII Godfrey Pavely was standing in his private room at Pavely's Bank. It was only a little after ten, and he had not been in the room many minutes, yet already he had got up from his writing-table and moved over to the middle one of the three windows overlooking the prim, exquisitely kept walled garden, which even nowadays reminded him of his early childhood. He had gazed out of the window for a few moments, but now he stood with his back to the window, staring unseeingly before him, a piece of note paper crushed up in his hand. For close on a hundred years his well-to-do careful-living forbears had passed their pleasant, uneventful lives in this spacious Georgian house, set in the centre of the wide High Street of the prosperous market town of Pewsbury.