"There's no more scandal talked in Scale than in any other place. I never pay any attention to it." "That's all very well--but you must defend yourself sometimes. And when it comes to saying that I've been living with Mr. Majendie in Scarby for the last three years--" Mrs. Majendie was so calm that Lady Cayley fancied that, after all, this was not the first time she had heard that rumour. "Let them say it," said she. "Nobody'll believe it." "Everybody believes it. I came to you because I was afraid you'd be the first." "To believe it? I assure you, Lady Cayley, I should be the last." "What was to prevent you? You didn't know me." "No. But I know my husband." "So do I." "Not _now_" said Mrs. Majendie quietly. Lady Cayley's bosom heaved. She had felt that she had risen to the occasion. She had achieved a really magnificent renunciation. With almost suicidal generosity, she had handed Majendie over intact, as it were, to his insufferable wife. She was wounded in several very sensitive places by the married woman's imperious denial of her part in him, by her attitude of indestructible and unique possession. If _she_ didn't know him she would like to know who did. But up till now she had meant to spare Mrs. Majendie her knowledge of him, for she was not ill-natured. She was sorry for the poor, inept, unhappy prude. Even now, seated in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room, she had no impulse to wound her mortally. Her instinct was rather to patronise and pity, to unfold the long result of a superior experience, to instruct this woman who was so incompetent to deal with men, who had spoiled, stupidly, her husband's life and her own. In that moment Sarah contemplated nothing more outrageous than a little straight talk with Mrs. Majendie. "Look here, Mrs. Majendie," she said, with an air of finely ungovernable impulse, "you're a saint. You know no more about men than your little girl does. I'm not a saint, I'm a woman of the world. I think I've had a rather larger experience of men--" Mrs. Majendie cut her short. "I do not want to hear anything about your experience." "Dear lady, you shan't hear anything about it. I was only going to tell you that, of all the men I've known, there's nobody I know better than your husband. My knowledge of him is probably a little different from yours." "That I can well believe." "You mean you think I wouldn't know a good man if I saw one? My experience isn't as bad as all that. I can tell a good woman when I see one, too. You're a good woman, Mrs. Majendie, and I've no doubt that you've been told I'm a bad one. All I can say is, that Walter Majendie was a good man when I first knew him. He was a good man when he left me and married you. So my badness can't have hurt him very much. If he's gone wrong now, it's that goodness of yours that's done it."