"I never tell anybody anything," said he. He gathered that it was not quite so settled as she wished him to suppose, and that Lady Cayley anticipated some possible dashing of the cup of matrimony from her lips. "So I'm not to have panics, in the night, and palpitations, every time I think of it?" "Certainly not, if it rests with me." "I wanted you to know. But it's so precious, I'm afraid of losing it. Nothing," said Lady Cayley, "can make up for the loss of a good man's love. Except," she added, "a good woman's." "Quite so," he assented coldly, with horror at his perception of her drift. His coldness riled her. "Who," said she with emphasis, "is the lady who keeps making those awful eyes at us over Pussy's top-knot?" "That lady," said Majendie, "as it happens, is my wife." "Why didn't you tell me that before? That's what comes, you see, of not introducing people. I'll tell you one thing, Wallie. She's awfully handsome. But you always had good taste. Br-r-r, there's a draught cutting my head off. You might shut that window, there's a dear." He shut it. "And put my cup down." He put it down. Anne saw him. She had seen everything. "And help me on with my cape." He lifted the heavy sable thing with two fingers, and helped her gingerly. A scent, horrid and thick, and profuse with memories, was shaken from her as she turned her shoulder. He hoped she was going. But she was not going; not she. Her body swayed towards him sinuously from hips obstinately immobile, weighted, literally, with her unshakable determination to sit on. She rewarded him with a smile which seemed to him, if anything, more atrociously luminous than the last. "I must keep you up to the mark," said she, as she turned with it. "Your wife's looking at you, and I feel responsible for your good behaviour. Don't keep her waiting. Can't you see she wants to go?" "And I want to go, too," said he savagely. And he went. And as she watched Mrs. Walter Majendie's departure, Lady Cayley smiled softly to herself; tasting the first delicious flavour of success. She had made Mrs. Walter Majendie betray herself; she had made her furious; she had made her go. She had sat Mrs. Walter Majendie out. If the town of Scale, the mayor and the aldermen, had risen and given her an ovation, she could not have celebrated more triumphally her return. CHAPTER XIII