And, if you please, I was left to understand that she was effacing herself, giving him up and making way for another woman simply because she fancied that he would be happier. I confess I should have had little patience with her, if she had not been so pitiable. Life was a blank without Spenworth. "Then why," I asked, "do you cut your own throat and drag the name of the family through the mire? Have you _no_ sense of your position after all these years, _no_ feeling for the rest of us?" "It's for him," she said. And I verily believe that, if he had told her literally to cut her throat, she would have done it... I have never been greatly attached to Kathleen. These backboneless, emotional women... But I felt that _some_body must do _some_thing for her. She came to Mount Street, and I reasoned with her again; at Cheniston I may be less than the dust, but under my own vine and fig-tree... In London I _have_ a certain _niche_ and I was bound to warn her that a divorced woman is _mal vue_ in certain circles and among certain persons who sometimes do me the honour to dine at my house. There would be occasions on which I should be unable to invite her. You would have said that she didn't care... She was staying with us when the case was tried; she stayed all through the summer, four months. No, you mustn't give me credit to which I'm not entitled. I felt very little sympathy when she proved obdurate; but, if one _could_ do anything to brighten her lot... I gave one or two little parties... Trying to take her out of herself. To some extent I succeeded. Kathleen has still the remains of good looks, though that fair fluffiness is not a type that I admire. When I refused to let her sit and mope in her room, she made an effort and assumed quite an attractive appearance. Several men were impressed... There was one in particular. I won't give you his name... And yet I don't know why I shouldn't; if Phyllida persuades you to listen to her story, I am sure she will spare you nothing. He was introduced to me as Captain Laughton; and the name conveyed nothing to me until some one reminded me of the old boy-and-girl attachment before Kathleen married Spenworth, when this man Laughton pretended to be heart-broken and disappeared to Central India. They had not met for twenty years, but, when he read of the divorce proceedings, I can only assume that he sought her out. Will met him at his club, I think, and the man virtually invited himself to come and dine. I was not greatly enchanted by him at our first meeting, but he was a new interest to Kathleen (I knew nothing until _days_ afterwards when I tackled her about her really unaccountable behaviour with him)... And I must confess that there were moments when poor Kathleen was a grave trial and I repented my impetuosity in asking her to stay with us. Captain Laughton came a second time and a third. By the end of a month he had really done us the honour to make our house his own...