"I hope David won't keep us waiting long," she said tartly. "I suppose he thought that he must put on his dress suit," and her expression showed clearly that in the matter of overdressing there was not much to choose between her brother and the woman who was to become his wife. "David will not be here to-night, Kate. He came, but he has gone away again--back to London." Miss Wellow spoke in a low, collected voice, and certain little irritating mannerisms with which she usually punctuated her words were absent. Perhaps it was the quiet, expressionless way in which she made her surprising statement that caused Mrs. Rigby, as she afterwards averred to her husband, at once to feel that something was wrong. "Gone back to London?" the sister repeated. "Why, whatever has he done that for? What business took him back to London, to-day?" and she looked searchingly at the other's flushed face. "Kate," said Miss Wellow, again speaking in the soft, emotionless voice which was so unlike her own, "I have got to tell you something which I fear will upset you--and make you very angry with poor David. Kate--he has gone back to Rosaleen." Mrs. Rigby withdrew her eyes quickly from Matilda Wellow's face. She did not then realise that the words which had just been spoken would for ever spoil to her this fragrant, familiar corner of her garden. All she felt now was a fierce, instinctive wish to get under shelter,--to hear whatever shameful thing had to be heard within four walls,--and so she put out her right hand and pushed her visitor before her into the sitting-room. Then, keeping her back to the window, she forced Miss Wellow to turn round. "Now tell me the truth," she commanded, "and Tiddy--above all, don't let yourself be upset, and don't get hysterical! I know what it is--you and David have had some silly quarrel. I saw from the first that you were making yourself too cheap! He can't go back to Rosaleen; he divorced her--and she's with another man. Besides, David is my brother! He wouldn't dare do such a wicked thing! You have no right, Tiddy, to accuse him of such shameful behaviour!" She spoke with quick, savage decision. But Miss Wellow faced her with a strange, untoward courage--"I won't have you speak so of him--of David, I mean!" she exclaimed passionately, "you're his sister and ought to take his part!" Then her voice broke, and with a touch of her old feebleness she added, "If you had heard him telling me about it, even you, Kate, who are so hard, would maybe have understood and felt sorry for him. _I_ felt very sorry for him----" "_You!_"--said Mrs. Rigby, with what appeared to the other withering contempt, "_you!_----" "He put it very beautifully," continued Miss Wellow; her voice was now almost inaudible, but Mrs. Rigby caught the word and repeated it with terrible irony: "Beautifully!" she said,--"beautifully!" Matilda shrank back as though she feared the other was about to strike her, but Mrs. Rigby did not see the gesture.