James Wilberforce did not gossip; nevertheless, within a week of the flight for paradise, rumor--the amazing omniscient rumor of London--began to weave, spider-like, her intangible filaments. As yet, rumor was unconfirmed: only a vague web of talk, spun from boudoir to drawing-room, from drawing-room to club, from club to Fleet Street, from Fleet Street to the Griffin. And in the center of the web, watching it a-weave, sat Aliette's husband. More than once, friends, those maddeningly tactful friends of the successful, touched on rumor; but none of them, not even Hector's father, succeeded in extracting a syllable. "My wife," said Hector Brunton, K.C, to his friends, "has not been feeling very well lately. I've sent her out of town for a bit of a holiday." At first the mere mention of Aliette's name enraged him; aroused in him a cruelty so melodramatic, so virulent that, for a full three days, he went in fear of becoming a murderer. He knew that he could find "the guilty pair" easily enough: Cavendish's clerk--Aliette's brief note told him--would give his solicitors their address. But even without Cavendish's clerk it would be simple to trace them. You couldn't lug a twelve-stone dog round the London railway termini without attracting the attention of at least half a hundred involuntary private detectives! Somehow (comedy and tragedy blend strangely in the heart of a man!) the idea of Ponto's accompanying his wife's elopement seemed in Brunton's eyes the culminating insult, a last intolerable outrage on the domestic decencies. He, Hector, had given Aliette that dog; and, though he hated the beast himself, he grudged it to Cavendish. To his enraged mind, the dog turned symbol of his betrayal. He had been betrayed by a dishonest woman. If Aliette had possessed any sense of honesty, she would have left Ponto behind: as she had left all his other gifts--the pearl necklace, the jeweled wrist-watch, the gray ostrich-feather fan. Then, hot on the heels of rage, came remorse--remorse, not for his cruelty, not for his infidelities, but only for the crass stupidity with which he believed himself to have handled the situation. He might have known the woman better than to attempt bluff. He ought to have pleaded with her. Or locked her in her bedroom. On no account ought he to have gone down to the courts next morning. Why hadn't he telephoned Mollie to return that very night? Why hadn't he wired to Clyst Fullerford for Aliette's mother? Self-pity succeeded. He pictured himself the injured husband; and, his heart softening towards Aliette, vowed "that seducer Cavendish should suffer." But Cavendish's sufferings did not suffice his imagination. Why should Cavendish alone suffer? Why should either the woman or the man get off scotfree? Why shouldn't both of them be made to suffer--damnably--as damnably as he himself was suffering? For, surely as love made paradise of Chilworth Cove, so surely did lust fashion hell at Lancaster Gate.