The shortest way to save it was the straight way. She would go straight to Mrs. Majendie with her proofs. Her duty to herself justified the somewhat unusual step. And, more than her duty, Sarah loved a scene. She loved to play with other people's emotions and to exhibit her own. She wanted to see how Mrs. Majendie would take it; how the white-faced, high-handed lady would look when she was told that her husband had consoled himself for her high-handedness. She had always been possessed by an ungovernable curiosity with regard to Majendie's wife. She did not know Majendie's wife, but she knew Majendie. She knew all about the separation and its cause. That was where she had come in. She divined that Mrs. Majendie had never forgiven her husband for his old intimacy with her. It was Mrs. Majendie's jealousy that had driven him out of the house, into the arms of pretty Maggie. Where, she wondered, would Mrs. Majendie's jealousy of pretty Maggie drive him? Though Sarah knew Majendie, that was more than she would undertake to say. But the more she thought about it, the more she wondered; and the more she wondered, the more she desired to know. She wondered whether Mrs. Majendie had heard the report. From all she could gather, it was hardly likely. Neither Mrs. Majendie nor her friends mixed in those circles where it went the round. The scandal of the clubs and of the Park would never reach her in the high seclusion of the house in Prior Street. Into that house Lady Cayley could not hope to penetrate except by guile. Once admitted, straightforwardness would be her method. She must not attempt to give the faintest social colour to her visit. She must take for granted Mrs. Majendie's view of her impossibility. To be sure Mrs. Majendie's prejudices were moral even more than social. But moral prejudice could be overcome by cleverness working towards a formidable moral effect. She would call after six o'clock, an hour incompatible with any social intention. An hour when she would probably find Mrs. Majendie alone. She rested all afternoon. At five o'clock she fortified herself with strong tea and brandy. Then she made an elaborate and thoughtful toilette. At forty-five Sarah's face was very large and horribly white. She restored, discreetly, delicately, the vanished rose. The beautiful, flower-like edges of her mouth were blurred. With a thin thread of rouge she retraced the once perfect outline. Wrinkles had drawn in the corners of the indomitable eyes, and ill-health had dulled their blue. That saddest of all changes she repaired by hand-massage, pomade, and belladonna. The somewhat unrefined exuberance of her figure she laced in an inimitable corset. Next she arrayed herself in a suit of dark blue cloth, simple and severely reticent; in a white silk blouse, simpler still, sewn with innocent daisies, Maggie's handiwork; in a hat, gay in form, austere in colour; and in gloves of immaculate whiteness.