Hetta found the telling of her story to be very difficult.

‘Mrs Hurtle,’ she said, ’I had never heard your name when he first asked me to be his wife.’

‘I dare say not.  Why should he have told you anything of me?’

’Because,—­oh, because—.  Surely he ought, if it is true that he had once promised to marry you.’

‘That is certainly true.’

’And you were here, and I knew nothing of it.  Of course I should have been very different to him had I known that,—­that,—­that—­’

’That there was such a woman as Winifred Hurtle interfering with him.  Then you heard it by chance, and you were offended.  Was it not so?’

’And now...