"She is older than he is," said Straker. "Do you remember when he wanted to give _me_ one and I wouldn't take it?" "I have not forgotten." The lovers wandered on down the rose garden and Philippa looked after them. Then she turned to Straker. "I've had a long talk with him. I've told him that he must settle down and that he couldn't do a better thing for himself than----" She paused. "Well," said Straker, "it _looks_ like it, doesn't it?" "Yes," said Philippa. "It looks like it." They talked of other things. "I am going," she said presently, "to ask Miss Milner to stay with me." Straker didn't respond. He was thinking deeply. Her face was so mysterious, so ominous, that yet again he wondered what she might be up to. He confessed to himself that this time he didn't know. But he made her promise to go on the river with him the next day. They were to start at eleven-thirty. At eleven Fanny came to him in the library. "She's gone," said Fanny. "She's left a little note for you. She said you'd forgive her, you'd understand." "Do _you_?" said Straker. "She said she was going to be straight and see this thing through." "What thing?" "Furny's thing. What else do you suppose she's thinking of? She said she'd only got to lift her little finger and he'd come back to her; she said there ought to be fair play. Do you see? She's gone away--to save him." "Good Lord!" said Straker. But he saw. XI It was nearly twelve months before he heard again from Miss Tarrant. Then one day she wrote and asked him to come and have tea with her at her flat in Lexham Gardens. He went. His entrance coincided with the departure of Laurence Furnival and a lady whom Philippa introduced to him as Mrs. Laurence, whom, she said, he would remember under another name. Furnival's wife was younger than ever and more like Nora Viveash and more different. When the door closed on them Philippa turned to him with her radiance (the least bit overdone). "_I_ made that marriage," she said, and staggered him. "Surely," he said, "it was made in heaven." "If this room is heaven. It was made here, six months ago." She faced him with all his memories. With all his memories and her own she faced him radiantly. "You know now," she said, "_why I did it_. It was worth while, wasn't it?" His voice struggled with his memories and stuck. It stuck in his throat. Before he left he begged her congratulations on a little affair of his own; a rather unhappy affair which had ended happily the week before last. He did not tell her that, if it hadn't been for the things dear Fanny Brocklebank had done for him, the way she had mixed herself up with his unhappy little affair, it might have ended happily a year ago. "But," said Philippa, "how beautiful!" He never saw Miss Tarrant again. Their correspondence ceased after his marriage, and he gathered that she had no longer any use for him. APPEARANCES I