"If you wish it I will write to Dr. Considine," she said. She didn't suggest the elaborate falsehoods on which she would build her letter. "I think you are old enough to decide," she told him. "What would you like to do?" "Is there any reason why I shouldn't travel?" he said. "I feel that I want a change. I should like to see something of the world." So, without further difficulty, it was arranged. She sent him round the world with a new tutor, waiting placidly and happily at Overton for his return. It was in these days that I became acquainted with her and conceived the admiration for her that I still hold. She often spoke to me in terms of the most utter devotion of her son. I imagined her an ideal mother, as indeed she was. After a year or more abroad Arthur returned, very much the man of the world. At his own desire he went up to Oxford, where he passed a perfectly normal three years and took a decent degree. In his last term he fell in love with the daughter of a neighbouring parson, whom, in due course, he married. The following year the young people went out to New Zealand, a country to which Arthur had been attracted on his travels, and that is all that I know of him. During all this time Mrs. Payne corresponded regularly with Gabrielle. Now that Arthur's safety was beyond question and even in the earlier debatable period, she had not the least objection to sharing him with her rival ... at a distance. She even sent her his letters from abroad. In this way they arrived at a curious and altogether happy intimacy. Gabrielle's letters became part of her life, and when, in the autumn after Arthur's engagement was announced, they suddenly stopped, Mrs. Payne felt that she had suffered a loss. She wrote two or three times to Lapton, but received no reply, and it was only by the chance meeting of a friend who had been staying in Devonshire that she learned what had happened. It came to her as a piece of idle gossip, but the shock of an extraordinary coincidence upset her for many days. It appeared that Dr. Considine, by this time a well known figure in the county, had gone out one evening rabbit-shooting with his wife. As they were returning from their expedition down one of the steep slopes above Lapton Manor, he had slipped in getting over a gate and fallen. It was the usual type of shooting accident that no one could explain. The gun had gone off and shot him dead. "He was terribly mutilated about the head," said Mrs. Payne's informant. She did not know what had happened to his widow. Probably she had gone to her cousins the Halbertons. In any case the jury had completely exonerated her. Mrs. Payne flared up in Gabrielle's defence. "Exonerated?" "It was well known that they were not on the best of terms," said her visitor discreetly. XXI