_Lady Ann_ (_to a friend of proved discretion_): When do I start, indeed? My dear, you are not very complimentary! We have been back nearly a week. _That_ shews how you have deserted me! ... No, I never intended to be away for more than about a fortnight. You see, so long as this wild beast is at large, prowling about Morecambe and preparing to spring at any moment, I _dare_ not leave Will unprotected. I really don't think I can add anything to what I've already told you; my boy himself is so very uncommunicative, and Arthur becomes alternately violent and morose when I beg in the _humblest_ way for the _least_ enlightenment. My reading of the position is that this "Molly Wanton" set her cap at Will and, when he refused to have anything to do with her, _rounded_ on him until he threw up a first-rate appointment rather than stay another hour in Morecambe; then she _stuffed_ her foolish father with lies until the man comes to this house like a demented creature and vows that my boy promised to _marry_ his Molly. Indeed I know what I am talking about. In this very room, though Arthur would not allow me to be present: it was not "a woman's province." Clergyman or no, the mad old father would have had short shrift from _me_. "Proof, my good man," I would have said, "proof." ... That is how the matter stands at present, and you can realize that, while we are braced to receive the next onslaught, there can be no question of long, careless holidays. But I was glad I went even for a short time. Even to Menton, which truly honestly is only a suburb of Monte Carlo (I had a reason), even with the railways in their present abominable condition--the French seem to be making no _effort_ to pull themselves together after the war except by means of wholesale robbery. They have clearly decided that, as we came to their rescue and paid for their war, it is now our bounden duty to pay for them in peace as well... I always believe in going _right_ away after a domestic crisis of that kind; and I was really beginning to fear a break-down if I stayed any longer in London. There is a curious convention that there is something _funny_ about a man of Arthur's age and position falling under the spell of a little chorus-girl; it is less funny when you have to fight for your life to preserve _your_ husband and the father of _your_ child. Some form of madness that overtakes men... I have not told you, I never _shall_ tell you what Arthur was like when he found that this girl had thrown him over at the last moment. Dazed... His behaviour to _me_ seemed of _no_ account; the fact that I knew everything from the girl's own lips and had helped to pack the clothes in which he was to run away with her... He was like a man in a trance...