"Ah, that's a pity--still--Well, is there anything else you want to tell me?" "I don't want to tell anyone anything. Only--when she said she'd go away, I advised her where to go--and I told her of a quiet place--and Mr. Temple's there. He's the other man who admires her." "I see. How Machiavelian of you!"--Miss Desmond touched the younger woman's hand with brusque gentleness--"And--?" "And I didn't quite tell her the truth about Mr. Vernon and me," said Lady St. Craye, wallowing in the abject joys of the confessional. "And I am a beast and not fit to live. But," she added with the true penitent's instinct of self-defence, "I _know_ it's only--oh, I don't know what--not love, with her. And it's my life." "Yes. And what about him?" "It's not love with him. At least it is--but she'd bore him. It's really his waking-up time. He's been playing the game just for counters all the while. Now he's learning to play with gold." "And it'll stay learnt. I see," said Miss Desmond. "Look here, I like you. I know we shouldn't have said all we have if you weren't ill, and I weren't anxious. But I'm with you in one thing. I don't want him to marry Betty. She wouldn't understand an artist in emotion. Is this Temple straight?" "As a yardstick." "And as wooden? Well, that's better. I'm on your side. But--we've been talking without the veils on--tell me one thing. Are you sure you could get him if Betty were out of the way?" "He kissed me once--since he's loved her," said Lady St. Craye, "and then I knew I could. He liked me better than he liked her--in all the other ways--before. I'm a shameless idiot; it's really only because I'm so feeble." She rose and stood before the glass, putting on her hat. "I do respect a woman who has the courage to speak the truth to another woman," said Miss Desmond. "I hope you'll get him--though it's not a very kind wish." Lady St. Craye let herself go completely in a phrase whose memory stung and rankled for many a long day. "Ah," she said, "even if he gets tired of me, I shall have got his children. You don't know what it is to want a child. Good-bye." "Good-bye," said Miss Desmond. "No--of course I don't." CHAPTER XXV. THE FOREST. Nothing lifts the heart like the sense of a great self-sacrifice nobly made. Betty was glad that she could feel so particularly noble. It was a great help. "He was mine," she told herself; "he meant to be--And I have given him up to her. It hurts--yes--but I did the right thing." She thought she hoped that he would soon forget her. And almost all that was Betty tried quite sincerely, snatching at every help, to forget him. Sometimes the Betty that Betty did not want to be would, quite deliberately and of set purpose, take out the nest of hungry memories, look at them, play with them, and hand over her heart for them to feed on. But always when she had done this she felt, afterwards, a little sorry, a little ashamed. It was too like the diary at Long Barton.