had seemed to be enjoying a private joke, and why those two women at the cocktail party had tittered when he strolled past them.
He broke out into a sweat. Then on a sudden he was seized with fury and he jumped up to go and awake Evie and ask her sternly for an explanation. But he stopped at the door. After all, what proof had he? A book. He remembered that he'd told Evie he thought it jolly good. True, he hadn't read it, but he'd pretended he had. He would look a perfect fool if he had to admit that.
'I must watch my step,' he muttered.
He made up his mind to wait for two or three days and think it all over. Then he'd decide what to do. He went to bed, but he couldn't sleep for a long time.
'Evie,' he kept on saying to himself. 'Evie, of all people.'
They met at breakfast next morning as usual. Evie was as she always was, quiet, demure, and self-possessed, a middle-aged woman who made no effort to look younger than she was, a woman who had nothing of what he still called It. He looked at her as he hadn't looked at her for years. She had her usual placid serenity. Her pale blue eyes were untroubled. There was no sign of guilt on her candid brow. She made the same little casual remarks she always made.
'It's nice to get back to the country again after those two hectic days in London. What are you going to do this morning?'
It was incomprehensible.
Three days later he went to see his solicitor. Henry Blane was an old friend of George's as well as his lawyer. He had a place not far from Peregrine's and for years they had shot over one another's preserves. For two days a week he was a country gentleman and for the other five a busy lawyer in Sheffield. He was a tall, robust fellow, with a boisterous manner and a jovial laugh, which suggested that he liked to be looked upon essentially as a sportsman and a good fellow and only incidentally as a lawyer. But he was shrewd and wordly-wise.
'Well, George, what's brought you here today?' he boomed as the colonel was shown into his office. 'Have a good time in London? I'm taking my missus up for a few days next week. How's Evie?'
'It's about Evie I've come to see you,' said Peregrine, giving him a suspicious look. 'Have you read her book?'
His sensitivity had been sharpened during those last days of troubled thought and he was conscious of a faint change in the lawyer's expression. It was as though he were suddenly on his guard.
'Yes, I've read it. Great success, isn't it? Fancy Evie breaking out into poetry. Wonders will never cease.'
George Peregrine was inclined to lose his temper.
'It's made me look a perfect damned fool'
'Oh, what nonsense, George! There's no harm in Evie's writing a book. You ought to be jolly proud of her.'
'Don't talk such rot. It's her own story. You know it and everyone else knows it. I suppose I'm the only one who doesn't know who her lover was.'
'There is such a thing as imagination, old boy. There's no reason to suppose the whole thing isn't made up.'
'Look here, Henry, we've know one another all our lives. We've had all sorts of good times together. Be honest with me. Can you look me in the face and tell me you believe it's a made-up story?'
Harry Blane moved uneasily in his chair. He was disturbed by the distress in old George's voice.
'You've got no right to ask me a question like that. Ask Evie.'
'I daren't,' George answered after an anguished pause. 'I'm afraid she'd tell me the truth.'
There was an uncomfortable silence.
'Who was the chap?'
Harry Blane looked at him straight in the eye.
'I don't know, and if I did I wouldn't tell you.'
'You swine. Don't you see what a position I'm in? Do you think it's very pleasant to be made absolutely ridiculous?'
The lawyer lit a cigarette and for some moments silently puffed it.
'I don't see what I can do for you,' he said at last.
'You've got private detectives you employ, I suppose. I want you to put them on the job and let them find everything out'
'It's not very pretty to put detectives on one's wife, old boy; and besides, taking for granted for a moment that Evie had an affair, it was a good many years ago and I don't