"A fellow in the army--Major Fairmile--a smart, popular sort of chap. He was her father's aide-de-camp when they married--just after we did--and they've been in India, or Egypt, ever since. They don't get on, and I suppose she comes and quarters herself on the old Duchess--as she used to on us." "You seem to know all about her! Yes, I remember now, I've heard people speak of her to you. Mrs. Fairmile--Mrs. Fairmile--yes, I remember," said Daphne, in a brooding voice, her cheeks becoming suddenly very red. "Your uncle--in town--mentioned her. I didn't take any notice." "Why should you? She doesn't matter a fig, either to you or to me!" "It matters to me very much that these people who spoke of her--your uncle and the others--knew what I didn't know!" cried Daphne, passionately. She stared at Roger, strangely conscious that something epoch-making and decisive had happened. Roger had had a secret from her all these years--that was what had happened; and now she had discovered it. That he _could_ have a secret from her, however, was the real discovery. She felt a fierce resentment, and yet a kind of added respect for him. All the time he had been the private owner of thoughts and recollections that she had no part in, and the fact roused in her tumult and bitterness. Nevertheless the disturbance which it produced in her sense of property, the shock and anguish of it, brought back something of the passion of love she had felt in the first year of their marriage. During these three years she had more than once shown herself insanely jealous for the merest trifles. But Roger had always laughed at her, and she had ended by laughing at herself. Yet all the time he had had this secret. She sat looking at him hard with her astonishing eyes; and he grew more and more uneasy. "Well, some of them knew," he said, answering her last reproach. "And they knew that I was jolly well quit of her! I suppose I ought to have told you, Daphne--of course I ought--I'm sorry. But the fact was I never wanted to think of her again. And I certainly never want to see her again! Why, in the name of goodness, did you accept that tea-fight?" "Because I mean to go." "Then you'll have to go without me," was the incautious reply. "Oh, so you're afraid of meeting her! I shall know what to think, if you _don't_ go." Daphne sat erect, her hands clasped round her knees. Roger made a sound of wrath, and threw his cigarette into the fire. Then, turning round again to face her, he tried to control himself. "Look here, Daphne, don't let us quarrel about this. I'll tell you everything you want to know--the whole beastly story. But it can't be pleasant to me to meet a woman who treated me as she did--and it oughtn't to be pleasant to you either. It was like her audacity to come this afternoon." "She simply wants to get hold of you again!" Daphne sprang up as she spoke with a violent movement, her face blazing.