She had brought her scene before my eyes vividly enough—the three wet, drab, mackintoshed figures there on the cliff in the rain; the sudden explosion of misery, spite, and love; the fight between the two girls; the disaster to one, to the other a victory that had brought no abiding peace. Yet, as she talked, there had been also in my mind’s eye another, a competing, picture. At the same spot—quite accidentally the same, or did she haunt it?—a tall, stately young woman—her figure quite ‘finished’ now, no longer lumpy—a young woman composed, ironical, verging indeed on the impudent—yet just vulnerable, prone to flush, tempted to fib, when the wedding of Waldo and Lucinda was the topic. I saw now why she had not been invited to that ceremony. Her presence would have been awkward for all parties. The skeleton at the feast indeed—if the feast had ever happened! But set against her, the sobbing girl, with her pitiful passion, her melodramatic “You’ll be sorry for this”—thrown out in the random of fury and spite, but perhaps not without some subtle instinct, some feminine intuition of the truth. “I saw Nina Frost once when I was last in England,” I said after a long pause. “If you ever meet her again, you’ll find her a good deal changed. She’s quite a woman of the world now.” “She’s the last person in the whole world that I wish to meet!” “I understand that. It couldn’t be pleasant for either of you. Well, probably you never will.” “Yes, we shall. It isn’t all finished between me and Nina yet. I had my victory; I threw it away. I saw her in her awful humiliation; how will she see me next, I wonder!” “Isn’t that sort of idea very—well, fanciful, Lucinda?” She made no reply; the veil had fallen over her eyes; she gave a little shiver. “It’s cold here,” I said. “Let’s go where it’s warm and light—to the restaurant—and finish the evening.” I smiled as I added, “And the story too, please.” “I can bring it right up to date. I had a letter from Arsenio to-day.” I was conscious of a slight shock of surprise. I had been thinking of Arsenio as a historical figure—an episode in her past. He was, however, also an existing fact; but what sort of a fact? About that I was still ignorant. CHAPTER VIII THE NEEDLEWOMAN