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“One doesn’t write such things,” he said. “You’ve been abroad for years.”

“It’s all right now?”

He nodded.

“I suppose so. Vere has never had the least suspicion.”

He drew his chair closer to mine, and was about to go on speaking when the servants came in with the coffee.

“Who’s the bell tolling for, Hurst?” he said to the butler.

“I couldn’t say, my lord.”

When the servants had gone Inley continued, at first in a calmer voice:

“Miss Bassett lived in the red cottage just beyond the gate of the South Lodge from time immemorial. You generally came to us in Scotland, I know, but I should think you must have seen her.”

Suddenly a recollection flashed upon me–a recollection of a long, flat figure, a drab face, thin hair coming away from a wrinkled forehead under a mushroom hat, flapping, old-fashioned golden earrings.

“Not the person I used to call ‘the Plank’?” I said.

“Did you?”

He thought for a moment.

“Yes; I believe you did-. I’d forgotten.”

“She was always in church twenty minutes before the service began, and always dropped her hymn-book coming out if there were visitors in the Abbey pew!”

“Yes, yes; that’s it. Miss Bassett is very nervous in little ways.”

“I remember her now perfectly. And you say she—-“

I looked at him, and hesitated.

“She saved Vere’s life and, indirectly, mine. I’ll tell you now we’re together again at last. I shall never tell Vere.”

He looked towards the windows, across which dark blue silk curtains were drawn, as if he could see the passing-bell swinging in the old square tower. Then he turned to me.

“You know how mad I was about Vere. It’s always like that with me. Unless I’m stone I’m fire. After we were married I got even madder. Having her all to myself was like enchantment, and in Italy, too, my other native land.”

I thought of Lady Inley’s eyes.

“I can understand,” I said.

“Of course, when we got back it had to be different. Friends came in, and she was run after and admired and written about. You know the publicity of life in modern London.”

“City of public-houses and society spies.”

“I bore it, because it’s supposed to be the thing. And Vere rather likes it, somehow. So I let her have her fun, as long as it was fun. I didn’t intend it should ever be anything else.”

He frowned. When he did that, and his thick eyebrows nearly met, he looked all Italian.

“We did the usual things–Paris, Ascot, Scotland, and so on–till Vere had to lie up.”

“Your boy?”

“Yes; Hugo came along. I was glad when that was over. I thought she was going to die. You knew Seymour Glynd?”

“Life Guards? Killed hunting a year ago?”

Inley nodded.

“He was a great deal with us soon after Hugo’s birth. I thought nothing of it. I’d known the fellow all my life. But then one nearly always has.”

He laughed bitterly.

“To cut that part short, two years ago in autumn we had Glynd staying with us down here for shooting. There were some others, of course–Mrs. Jack, Bobbie Elphinton, and Lady Bobbie–but you know the lot.”

“I did.”

“Ah,” he said, “you’ve been well out of it these years. Well, the shoot was to break up on a Friday, and I’d arranged to go to town that day with the rest. Vere didn’t intend to come. She said she was feeling tired, and was going to have a Friday to Monday rest cure. That’s the thing, you know, nowadays. You get a Swedish masseuse down to stay, and go to bed and drink milk. Vere had engaged a masseuse to come on the Friday night. On the Thursday, the day before we were all going to town, Glynd hurt his foot getting over a fence into a turnip field–at least I thought so.”

He stopped.

“Everyone thought so, I believe–except, of course, Vere. I wonder if they did, though?” he added moodily. “Or whether I was the only–But what does it matter now? Glynd said he only wanted a couple of days’ rest to be all right again, and asked me if he might stay on at the Abbey till the Monday. Of course I said ‘Yes; if he wouldn’t want a hostess.’ Because Vere said to me, when she heard of it, that she must have her rest cure all the same. Glynd swore he’d be quite happy alone. So he stayed, and the rest of us came up to town on the Friday. Well, on the Saturday morning I was walking across the park when I met the Swedish massense who was to have gone down to Vere on the Friday night. I knew her, because Vere had often had her before in London. ‘Hullo!’ I said. ‘You ought to be down at Inley Abbey with my wife.’ ‘No, my lord,’ she said. ‘Why not?’ ‘I’ve had a wire from Lady Inley not to go.’ ‘A wire!’ I said. ‘When did you get it?’ ‘On Thursday night, my lord.’ You mean last night?’ I said, thinking Vere must have changed her mind after we had left. ‘No,’ said the woman; ‘on Thursday night, late.’ Then I remembered that, after Glynd had hurt his foot and asked to stay, Vere had gone out alone for a drive in her cart, to get a last breath of air before the rest cure. She must have sent the telegram herself then. All of a sudden I seemed to understand a lot of things.'”