Suddenly Miss Wellow bent down. Her hand fumbled blindly among the soft, voluminous flounces of her skirt. "I've got something here," she said in a muffled voice, "that I want you to give Rosy, Matt. But though I know it's there, I can't find the pocket; you know I had one put in because David once said that he didn't like a woman without a pocket in her dress. I've found it--here it is!"--she took a step forward, and standing close to her old friend, thrust into his unresisting hand a small hard substance. He looked down and saw it was the ruby ring. "You can give this to the child," she said breathlessly, "I don't want to see her again--with love from Auntie Tiddy." But this was more than Mrs. Rigby could stand. "Well, it's a good thing," she exclaimed to her husband, "that Tiddy takes it like that! No man would ever have dared to treat me so! But as long as she doesn't care--still, she needn't take David's part against his own sister, who has the right----" But what right David's sister had was never explained, for Miss Wellow suddenly swayed forward; she would have fallen to the ground had not Mr. Rigby caught her. "Why, she's fainted!" he said pitifully; "she does care--more than you think, Kate. But she will come round soon--too soon," he muttered to himself. * * * * * It was the same night, or rather the next morning, for the dawn was beginning to make its grey way into the bed-chamber of Mr. and Mrs. Rigby; it threw into dim relief the large, almost square four-poster, under the chintz-covered canopy of which the husband and wife lay, rigid as if carved in stone. "Kate," said Matt, "are you awake?" He could just see her head lying on the other pillow beside him. Her still abundant hair was loosened and gave her a look of youth. Tears had made a furrow down her cheeks. "Yes," said Mrs. Rigby, "I am awake, Matt. What is it you want?" "I'm afraid, my dear, that you are very much upset." There were understanding, sympathy, ay, and tenderness expressed in the way Mr. Rigby uttered the homely word. His wife, for the first time in their twenty-five years of married life, felt a responsive thrill. For the first time she was unfaithful to Nat Bower. "It's of you I'm thinking," she whispered. "I've been trying all night to forget David,--my poor little David,--but it's terrible to me to think that you, Matt, married into a family that could be guilty of such shameful behaviour!" VI THE DECREE MADE ABSOLUTE James Tapster was eating his solitary, well-cooked dinner in his comfortable and handsome house, a house situated in one of the half-moon terraces which line and frame the more aristocratic side of Regent's Park, and which may indeed be said to have private grounds of their own, for each resident enjoys the use of a key to a portion of the Park entitled locally "The Enclosure."