“Not so far as I’m concerned.”

“Pity there are always two parties to a conference.”

“Uncle Lawrence,” she said suddenly, “what is the law of divorce now?”

The baronet uncrossed his long thin legs.

“I’ve never had any particular truck with it. I believe it’s less old-fashioned than it was, but see Whitaker.” He reached for the red-backed volume. “Page 258—here you are, my dear.”

Clare read in silence, while he gazed at her ruefully. She looked up and said.

“Then, if I want him to divorce me, I’ve got to commit adultery.”

“That is, I believe, the elegant way they put it. In the best circles, however, the man does the dirty work.”

“Yes, but he won’t. He wants me back. Besides, he’s got his position to consider.”

“There is that, of course,” said Sir Lawrence, thoughtfully; “a career in this country is a tender plant.”

Clare closed the Whitaker.

“If it weren’t for my people,” she said, “I’d give him cause tomorrow and have done with it.”

“You don’t think a better way would be to give partnership another trial?”

Clare shook her head.

“I simply couldn’t.”

“That’s that, then,” said Sir Lawrence, “and it’s an awkward ‘that.’ What does Dinny say?”

“I haven’t discussed it with her. She doesn’t know he’s here.”

“At present, then, you’ve no one to advise you?”

“No. Dinny knows why I left, that’s all.”

“I should doubt if Jerry Corven is a very patient man.”

Clare laughed.

“We’re neither of us long-suffering.”

“Do you know where he is staying?”

“At the Bristol.”

“It might,” said Sir Lawrence slowly, “be worth while to keep an eye on him.”

Clare shivered. “It’s rather degrading; besides, Uncle, I don’t want to hurt his career. He’s very able, you know.”

Sir Lawrence shrugged. “To me,” he said, “and to all your kin, his career is nothing to your good name. How long has he got over here?”

“Not long, I should think.”

“Would you like me to see him, and try to arrange that you go your own ways?”

Clare was silent, and Sir Lawrence, watching her, thought: ‘Attractive, but a lot of naughty temper. Any amount of spirit, and no patience at all.’ Then she said:

“It was all my fault, nobody wanted me to marry him. I hate to bother you. Besides, he wouldn’t consent.”

“You never know,” murmured Sir Lawrence. “If I get a natural chance, shall I?”

“It would be lovely of you, only—”

“All right, then. In the meantime young men without jobs—are they wise?”

Clare laughed. “Oh, I’ve ‘larned’ him. Well, thank you frightfully, Uncle Lawrence. You’re a great comfort. I was an awful fool; but Jerry has a sort of power, you know; and I’ve always liked taking risks. I don’t see how I can be my mother’s daughter, she hates them; and Dinny only takes them on principle.” She sighed. “I won’t bore you any more now.” And, blowing a kiss, she went out.

Sir Lawrence stayed in his armchair thinking: ‘Putting my oar in! A nasty mess, and going to be nastier! Still, at her age something’s got to be done. I must talk to Dinny.’

From Condaford the hot airs of election time had cleared away, and the succeeding atmosphere was crystallised in the General’s saying:

“Well, those fellows got their deserts.”

“Doesn’t it make you tremble, Dad, to think what THESE fellows’ deserts will be if they don’t succeed in putting it over now?”

The General smiled.

“‘Sufficient unto the day,’ Dinny. Has Clare settled down?”

“She’s in her diggings. Her work so far seems to have been writing letters of thanks to people who did the dirty work at the cross-roads.”

“Cars? Does she like Dornford?”

“She says he’s quite amazingly considerate.”

“His father was a good soldier. I was in his brigade in the Boer War for a bit.” He looked at his daughter keenly, and added: “Any news of Corven?”

“Yes, he’s over here.”

“Oh! I wish I wasn’t kept so in the dark. Parents have to stand on the mat nowadays, and trust to what they can hear through the keyhole.”

Dinny drew his arm within hers.

“One has to be so careful of their feelings. Sensitive plants, aren’t you, Dad?”

“Well, it seems to your mother and me an extraordinarily bad look-out. We wish to goodness the thing could be patched up.”

“Not at the expense of Clare’s happiness, surely?”

“No,” said the General, dubiously, “no; but there you are at once in all these matrimonial things. What is and will be her happiness? She doesn’t know, and you don’t, and I don’t. As a rule in trying to get out of a hole you promptly step into another.”

“Therefore don’t try? Stay in your hole? That’s rather what Labour wanted to do, isn’t it?”

“I ought to see him,” said the General, passing over the simile, “but I can’t go blundering in the dark. What do you advise, Dinny?”

“Let the sleeping dog lie until it gets up to bite you.”

“You think it will?”

“I do.”

“Bad!” muttered the General. “Clare’s too young.”

That was Dinny’s own perpetual thought. What at the first blush she had said to her sister: “You must get free,” remained her conviction. But how was she to get free? Knowledge of divorce had been no part of Dinny’s education. She knew that the process was by no means uncommon, and she had as little feeling against it as most of her generation. To her father and mother it would probably seem lamentable, doubly so if Clare were divorced instead of divorcing—that would be a stigma on her to be avoided at almost all cost. Since her soul-racking experience with Wilfrid, Dinny had been very little in London. Every street, and above all the park, seemed to remind her of him and the desolation he had left in her. It was now, however, obvious to her that Clare could not be left unsupported in whatever crisis was befalling.

“I think I ought to go up, Dad, and find out what’s happening.”

“I wish to God you would. If it’s at all possible to patch things up, they ought to be.”

Dinny shook her head.

“I don’t believe it is, and I don’t believe you’d wish it if Clare had told you what she told me.”

The General stared. “There it is, you see. In the dark.”

“Yes, dear, but till she tells you herself I can’t say more.”

“Then the sooner you go up the better.”

Free from the scent of horse, Melton Mews was somewhat strikingly impregnated with the odour of petrol. This bricked alley had become, indeed, the haunt of cars. To right and to left of her, entering late that afternoon, the doors of garages gaped or confronted her with more or less new paint. A cat or two stole by, and the hinder parts of an overalled chauffeur bending over a carburettor could be seen in one opening; otherwise life was at a discount, and the word ‘mews’ no longer justified by manure.

No. 2 had the peacock-green door of its former proprietress, whom, with so many other luxury traders, the slump had squeezed out of business. Dinny pulled a chased bell-handle, and a faint tinkle sounded, as from some errant sheep. There was a pause, then a spot of light showed for a moment on a level with her face, was obscured, and the door was opened. Clare, in a jade-green overall, said:

“Come in, my dear. This is the lioness in her den, ‘the Douglas in her hall!’”

Dinny entered a small, almost empty room hung with the green Japanese silk of the antique dealer and carpeted with matting. A narrow spiral staircase wormed into it at the far corner, and a subdued light radiated from a single green-paper-shaded bulb hanging in the centre. A brass electric heater diffused no heat.

“Nothing doing here so far,” said Clare. “Come upstairs.”

Dinny made the tortuous ascent, and stepped into a rather smaller sitting-room. It had two curtained windows looking over the mews, a couch with cushions, a little old bureau, three chairs, six Japanese prints, which Clare had evidently just been hanging, an old Persian rug over the matted floor, an almost empty bookcase, and some photographs of the family standing on it. The walls were distempered a pale grey, and a gas fire was burning.