“You’ve been and gone and done for both of us, Majy dear,” she remarked, pouring out tea.

“What do you mean?”

“Our reputations.  What a scandal in Wellingsford!”

She looked me clearly in the eyes and smiled, and her hand did not shake as she held my cup.  And by these signs I knew that she had taken herself again in grip and forbade reference to the agony through which she had passed.

Quickly she turned the conversation to the Tuftons.  What had happened?  I told her meagrely.  She insisted on fuller details.  So, flogged by her, I related what I had gleaned from Marigold’s wooden reports.  He always conveyed personal information as though he were giving evidence against a defaulter.  I had to start all over again.  Apparently this had happened:  Mrs. Tufton had arrayed herself, not in sackcloth and ashes, for that was apparently her normal attire, but in an equivalent, as far as a symbol of humility was concerned; namely, in decent raiment, and had sought her husband’s forgiveness.  There had been a touching scene in the scullery which Mrs. Marigold had given up to them for the sake of privacy, in which the lady had made tearful promises of reform and the corporal had magnanimously passed the sponge over the terrible reckoning on her slate.  Would he then go home to his penitent wife?  But the gallant fellow, with the sturdy common-sense for which the British soldier is renowned, contrasted the clover in which he was living here with the aridness of Flowery End, and declined to budge.  High sentiment was one thing, snug lying was another.  Next time he came back, if she had re-established the home in its former comfort, he didn’t say as how he wouldn’t—­

“But,” she cried—­and this bit I didn’t tell Betty—­“the next time you may come home dead!”

“Then,” replied Tufton, “let me see what a nice respectable coffin, with brass handles and lots of slap-up brass nails and a brass plate, you can get ready for me.”

Since the first interview, I informed Betty, there had been others daily—­most decorous.  They were excellent friends.  Neither seemed to perceive anything absurd in the situation.  Even Marigold looked on it as a matter of course.

“I have an idea,” said Betty.  “You know we want some help in the servant staff of the hospital?”

I did.  The matron had informed the Committee, who had empowered her to act.

“Why not let me tackle Mrs. Tufton while she is in this beautifully chastened and devotional mood?  In this way we can get her out of the mills, out of Flowery End, fill her up with noble and patriotic emotions instead of whisky, and when Tufton returns, present her to him as a model wife, sanctified by suffering and ennobled by the consciousness of duty done.  It would be splendid!”

For the first time since the black day there came a gleam of fun into Betty’s eyes and a touch of colour into her cheeks.