"Well, I'm eternally grateful to you, Mrs. Winslow, for giving me this hint! You see, I'm very fond of Tropenell. It's a peculiar kind of feeling--there's nothing in the world I wouldn't do for him. Good God! I only wish that he and Laura----" He was going to say "would have the pluck to bolt together!" but Katty supplied a very different ending to his sentence. "Ah," she exclaimed, "I only wish that Laura and Oliver _could_ marry. They're made for one another. You can't see them together without seeing that!" She went on feelingly, "Laura was dreadfully unhappy with Godfrey Pavely even before Oliver Tropenell came into her life. She and Mr. Pavely are quite unsuited to one another." There was a queer bitterness in her voice. And then Gillie Baynton suddenly remembered--remembered the flood of gossip there had been at one time concerning those two--pretty Katty Fenton, as she had been then, and Godfrey Pavely, the man who later became his own brother-in-law. He gave her a queer, shrewd glance, and Mrs. Winslow went on, rather quickly and breathlessly, "You mustn't think that I dislike Godfrey Pavely! He's been very good to me--as good as Laura. I'm what they call an innocent _divorcée_, Mr. Baynton, and they both helped me through the trouble. It was pretty bad at the time, I can tell you. But of course I can't help seeing--no one could help seeing--that Godfrey and Laura aren't suited to one another, and that they would each be much, much happier apart." At the back of her clever, astute mind was the knowledge that it was quite on the cards that Oliver, or Oliver's mother, would say something to Gilbert Baynton concerning herself and her intimacy with Godfrey Pavely. She must guard against that, and guard against it now. So she went on, pensively, "I don't know, to tell you the truth, for which of them I'm the more sorry--Laura, Godfrey, or Oliver! They're all three awfully to be pitied. Of course, if they lived in America it would be quite simple; Laura and Godfrey would be divorced by mutual consent, and then Laura would be able to be happy with Mr. Tropenell." "And is nothing of that sort possible here?" asked Gillie Baynton curiously. "This old England _has_ stood still!" Katty shook her head regretfully. "No, there's nothing of the sort possible here. Of course there are ways and means----" The other fixed his eyes on her. "Yes?" he said interrogatively. "I fear that they are not ways and means that Godfrey or Laura would ever lend themselves to." "Then there's no cutting the Gordian knot?" But that wasn't quite what Katty meant to imply. "I don't know," she said hesitatingly. "Godfrey would do almost anything to avoid any kind of scandal. But then you see one comes up against Laura----" He nodded quickly. "Yes, I quite understand that Laura would never do anything she thought wrong--queer, isn't it?"