“You haven’t been anxious about me, Ciss?”

“Not at all,” she replied quietly, rather permitting his caresses than encouraging them.

“Some one I hadn’t met for several years.  He was going down to Brighton, and persuaded me to accompany him.  I didn’t write because—­well, I thought it would be better if we kept quite apart for a day or two.  Things were getting wrong, weren’t they?”

“I’m afraid so.  But how are they improved?”

“Why, I had a talk with your aunt about Mrs. Travis.  I quite believe I was misled by that fellow that talked scandal.  She seems very much to be pitied, and I’m really sorry that I caused you to break with her.”

Cecily watched him as he spoke, and he avoided her eyes.  He was holding her hands and fondling them; now he bent and put them to his lips.  She said nothing.

“Suppose you write to her, Ciss, and say that I made a fool of myself.  You’re quite at liberty to do so.  Tell her exactly how it was, and ask her to forgive us.”

She did not answer immediately.

“Will you do that?”

“I feel ashamed to.  I know very well how I should receive such a letter.”

“Oh, you!  But every one hasn’t your superb arrogance!” He laughed.  “And it’s hard to imagine you in such a situation.”

“I hope so.”

“Aunt tells me that the poor woman has very few friends.”

“It’s very unlikely that she will ever make one of me.  I don’t see how it is possible, after this.”

“But write the letter, just to make things simpler if you meet anywhere.  As a piece of justice, too.”

Not that day, but the following, Cecily decided herself to write.  She could only frame her excuse in the way Reuben had suggested; necessarily the blame lay on him.  The composition cost her a long time, though it was only two pages of note-paper; and when it was despatched, she could not think without hot cheeks of its recipient reading it She did not greatly care for Mrs. Travis’s intimacy, but she did desire to remove from herself the imputation of censoriousness.

There came an answer in a day or two.

“I was surprised that you (or Mr. Elgar) should so readily believe ill of me, but I am accustomed to such judgments, and no longer resent them.  A wife is always in the wrong; when a woman marries, she should prepare herself for this.  Or rather, her friends should prepare her, as she has always been kept in celestial ignorance by their care.  Pray let us forget what has happened.  I won’t renew my request to be allowed to visit you; if that is to be, it will somehow come to pass naturally, in the course of time.  If we meet at Mrs. Lessingham’s, please let us speak not a word of this affair.  I hate scenes.”