He did his best to make matters clearer. No Wildacre was ever at a loss for words. "You see, it was in this way: Fay absolutely adored you--simply worshipped the ground you walked on. I'm not justifying her for feeling like this," he added, with the first touch of his old whimsicalness that he had shown since his return; "I don't deny that it was very foolish of her to set up any man as a god and worship him like that: but that is what she did; and it is right for you to know it, before you judge her for what she did besides." "I shall never judge her," I interpolated; "God forbid!" "Well, then, before you understand what she did, if you prefer the word. It really was Fay's absorbing and unreasoning adoration of you that upset the apple-cart and did all the mischief. If she'd been more sensible and discriminating, all this trouble would never have happened: but she was young and foolish, and madly in love at that. And she was so wild with jealousy, because she thought you loved your sister more than you loved her, that she hardly knew what she was doing." "I thought she found me old and dull and tiresome," I murmured. "I know you did, and that really was too idiotic for anything! Why, she was simply crazy for love of you from the first time she saw you till the day she ran away; but you footled the whole thing! I'm sorry to say it, Reggie, but you really did." Amazement had rendered me humble. I realised that if any one had known Fay thoroughly, Frank had; and it was as an expert that he spoke. "Please explain," I said meekly. Nothing loth, he continued: "Well, if you want the truth, you shall have it. And of course you must bear in mind that, if Fay hadn't been so ridiculously in love, silly little things wouldn't have hurt her as they did, and she wouldn't have gone off her head with jealousy of Miss Kingsnorth. I know men like to feel that their wives are very much in love with them: but the wives who aren't so much in love are really the best for everyday wear. They are more tolerant and much less exacting." Frank was a wiser man than he had been when he left Restham. I noted that. And for the first time a tiny doubt crept into my mind as to whether even then he had been the most unwise man there. "In the first place," he went on, "Fay was most frightfully upset at your asking Miss Kingsnorth to stay on living with you after you were married. That started the feeling." "I thought that as Fay was still such a child it would be a comfort to her to have a kind and loving woman to turn to and lean upon," I explained.