"And I"--Daphne made a scornful lip--"was the feather-bed to catch you as you fell. It never occurred to you that it might have been honourable to tell me?" "Well, I don't know--I never asked you to tell me of your affairs!" Roger, his hands in his pockets, looked round at her with an awkward laugh. "I told you everything!" was the quick reply--"_everything_." Roger uncomfortably remembered that so indeed it had been; and moreover that he had been a good deal bored at the time by Daphne's confessions. He had not been enough in love with her--then--to find them of any great account. And certainly it had never occurred to him to pay them back in kind. What did it matter to her or to anyone that Chloe Morant had made a fool of him? His recollection of the fooling, at the time he proposed to Daphne, was still so poignant that it would have been impossible to speak of it. And within a few months afterwards he had practically forgotten it--and Chloe too. Of course he could not see her again, for the first time, without being "a bit upset"; mostly, indeed, by the boldness--the brazenness--of her behaviour. But his emotions were of no tragic strength, and, as Lady Barnes had complained to Mrs. French, he was now honestly in love with Daphne and his child. So that he had nothing but impatience and annoyance for the recollection of the visit of the afternoon; and Daphne's attitude distressed him. Why, she was as pale as a ghost! His thoughts sent Chloe Fairmile to the deuce. "Look here, dear!" he said, kneeling down suddenly beside his wife--"don't you get any nonsense into your head. I'm not the kind of fellow who goes philandering after a woman when she's jilted him. I took her measure, and after you accepted me I never gave her another thought. I forgot her, dear--bag and baggage! Kiss me, Daphne!" But Daphne still held him at bay. "How long were you engaged to her?" she repeated. "I've told you--three weeks!" said the man, reluctantly. "How long had you known her?" "A year or two. She was a distant cousin of father's. Her father was Governor of Madras, and her mother was dead. She couldn't stand India for long together, and she used to stay about with relations. Why she took a fancy to me I can't imagine. She's so booky and artistic, and that kind of thing, that I never understood half the time what she was talking about. Now you're just as clever, you know, darling, but I do understand you." Roger's conscience made a few dim remonstrances. It asked him whether in fact, standing on his own qualifications and advantages of quite a different kind, he had not always felt himself triumphantly more than a match for Chloe and her cleverness. But he paid no heed to them. He was engaged in stroking Daphne's fingers and studying the small set face. "Whom did she marry?" asked Daphne, putting an end to the stroking.