It was over this housekeeper question that he had at last escaped from Maud's domestic thraldom, for his sister-in-law, offended by his rejection of each of her candidates, had declared that she would take no more trouble about his household affairs! Nay, more; she had reminded him with a smile which she had honestly tried to make pleasant, that there is, after all, no fool like an old fool--about women! This insinuation had made Mr. Tapster very angry, and straightway he had engaged a respectable cook-housekeeper, and, although he had soon become aware that the woman was feathering her own nest,--James Tapster, as you will have divined ere now, was fond of good workaday phrases,--yet she had a pleasant, respectful manner, and kept rough order among the younger servants.

Mr. Tapster's sister-in-law only now interfered where his children were concerned. Never having been herself a mother, she had, of course, been able to form a clear and unprejudiced judgment as to how children, and especially as to how little boys, should be physically and mentally trained.

As yet, however, Maud had not been very successful with her two nephews and infant niece, but this was doubtless owing to the fact that there had been something gravely amiss with each of the five nurses who had been successively engaged by her during the last year.

The elder of Mr. Tapster's sons was six and the second four; the youngest child, a little girl named unfortunately Flora after her mother, was three years old. There had been a fourth, Flossy's second baby, also a girl, who had only lived one day. All this being so, was it not strange that a young matron who had led, for some four years out of the eight years her married life had lasted, so wholly womanly and domestic an existence as had fallen to the lot of Flossy, should have been led astray by the meretricious allurements of unlawful love?--Maud's striking thought and phrase this.

And yet Flossy, in spite of her frivolity, had somehow managed the children far better than Maud was now able to do. At the present time, so Mr. Tapster admitted to himself with something very like an inward groan, his two sons possessed every vice of which masculine infancy is capable. They had become--so he was told by their indignant nurses--the terror of the well-behaved children who shared with them the pleasures of the Park Enclosure, where they took their daily exercise; and Baby, once so sweet and good, was now very fretful and peevish.

Again the train of Mr. Tapster's mournful thoughts was disturbed by a curious little sound--that of someone creeping softly down the staircase leading from the upper floors.

Once more he half rose from his chair, only to fall heavily back again with a look of impotent annoyance on his round, whiskered face. Where was the use of his going out into the hall and catching Nurse on her way to the kitchen? Maud had declared, very early in the day, that there should be as little communication as possible between the kitchen and the nursery; but Mr. Tapster sometimes found himself in secret sympathy with the two women whose disagreeable duty it was to be always with his three turbulent children.

Mr. Tapster frowned and stared gloomily into the fire; then he suddenly pulled himself together rather sharply, for the door behind him had slowly swung open. This was intolerable! The parlour-maid had again and again been told that, whatever might have been the case in her former places, no door in Mr. Tapster's house was to be opened without the preliminary of a respectful knock.

Fortified by the memory of what had been a positive order, he turned round and nerved himself to deliver the necessary rebuke; but instead of the shifty-eyed, impudent-looking woman he had thought to see, there stood close to him, so close that he could almost have touched her--Flossy, his wife, or rather the woman who, though no longer his wife, had still, as he had been informed to his discomfiture, the right to bear his name.

A very strange feeling, and one so complicated that it sat uneasily upon him, took instant possession of Mr. Tapster--anger, surprise, and relief warred with one another in his heart.

Then he began to think that his eyes must be playing him some curious trick, for the figure at which he was staring remained strangely still and motionless.

Was it possible that his mind, dwelling constantly on Flossy, had evoked her wraith? But, no; looking up in startled silence at the still figure standing before him, he realised that not so would memory have conjured up the pretty, bright little woman of whom he had once been proud.

Flossy still looked pretty, but she was thin and pale, and there were dark rings round her eyes; also her dress was worn, her hat curiously shabby.

As Mr. Tapster stared up at her, noting these things, one of her hands began playing nervously with the fringe of the dining-table cover, and the other sought the back of what had once been one of her dining-room chairs.

As he watched her making these slight movements, nature so far rea.s.serted itself that a feeling of poignant regret, of pity for her--as well as, of course, a much larger share of pity for himself--came over James Tapster.

Had Flossy spoken then,--had she possessed the intuitive knowledge of men which is the gift of so many otherwise unintelligent women,--the whole of Mr. Tapster's future, to say nothing of her own, might have been different, and, it may be suggested, happier.

But the moment of softening and mansuetude slipped quickly by, and was succeeded by a burst of anger, for Mr. Tapster suddenly became aware that Flossy's left hand, the little thin hand resting on the back of the chair, was holding two keys which he recognised at once as his property.

The one was a replica of the latch-key which always hung on his watch-chain, while the other and larger key, to which was attached a bra.s.s tab bearing the name of Tapster and the address of the house, gave access to the Enclosure Garden opposite c.u.mberland Crescent.

Avoiding her eager, pitiful look, Mr. Tapster set himself to realise, with a shrewdness for which William and Maud would never have given him credit, what Flossy's possession of those two keys had meant during the last few months.

This woman, who both was and was not Mrs. Tapster, had retained the power to come freely in and out of _his_ house! She had been able to make her way, with or without the connivance of the servants, into _his_ children's nursery at any hour of the day or night convenient to herself. With the aid of that Enclosure key she had no doubt often seen the children during their daily walk! In a word, Flossy had been able to enjoy all the privileges of motherhood while having forfeited all those of happy wifehood!

His mind hastened heavily on--what a fool he must have looked before his servants, how they must have laughed to think that he was being so deceived and taken in! Why, even the policeman who stood at point duty outside must have known all about it!

Small wonder that Mr. Tapster felt extremely incensed; small wonder that his heart, hardening, solidifying, expelled any feeling of pity provoked by Flossy's sad and downcast appearance.

"I must request you," he said, in a voice which even to himself sounded harsh and needlessly loud, "to give up those keys which you hold in your hand. You have no right to their possession, and I grieve to think that you took advantage of my great distress of mind not to return them with the things of which I sent you a list by my brother William. I cannot believe"--and now Mr. Tapster lied as only the very truthful can lie on occasion--"I cannot believe, I say, that you have taken advantage of my having overlooked them, and that you have ever before to-night forced yourself into this house! Still less can I believe that you have taught our--_my_--children to deceive their father!"

Even when uttering his first sentence he had noticed that there had come over Flossy's face--which was thinner, if quite as pretty and youthful-looking as when he had last seen it--an expression of obstinacy which he had once well known and always dreaded. It had been Flossy's one poor weapon against her husband's superior sense and power of getting his own way, and sometimes it had vanquished him in that fair fight which is always being waged between the average husband and wife.

"You are right," she cried pa.s.sionately; "I have not taught the children to deceive you! I have never come into this house until I felt sure that they were asleep and alone, though I've often wondered that they never woke up and knew that their own mother was there! But more than once, James, I've felt like going after that Society which looks after badly-treated children--for the last nurse you had for them was so cruel! If she hadn't left you soon I should have _had_ to do something.

I used to feel desperate when I saw her shake Baby in her pram; why, one day, in the Enclosure, a lady spoke to her about it, and threatened to tell her--her mistress----"

Flossy's voice sank to a shamed whisper. The tears were rolling down her cheeks; she was speaking in angry gasps, and what she said actually made James Tapster feel, what he knew full well he had no reason to feel, ashamed of himself.

"That is why"--she went on--"that is why I have, as you say, forced myself into your house, and why, too, I have now come here to ask you to forgive me--to take me back--just for the sake of the children."

Mr. Tapster's mind was one that travelled surely if slowly. He saw his chance and seized it.

"And why," he said impressively, "had that woman--the nurse, I mean--no mistress? Tell me that, Flossy. You should have thought of all that before you behaved as you did!"

"I didn't know--I didn't think----"

Mr. Tapster finished the sentence for her. "You didn't think," he observed impressively, "that I should ever find you out."

Then there came over him a morbid wish to discover--to learn from her own lips--why Flossy had done such a shameful and extraordinary thing as to be unfaithful to her marriage vow.

"Whatever made you behave so?" he asked in a low voice. "I wasn't unkind to you, was I? You had a nice, comfortable home, hadn't you?"

"I was mad," she answered with a touch of sharp weariness. "I don't suppose I could ever make you understand, and yet"--she looked at him deprecatingly--"I suppose, James, that you too were young once, and--and--mad?"

Mr. Tapster stared at Flossy. What extraordinary things she said! Of course he had been young once; for the matter of that he didn't feel old--not to say old--even now. But he had always been perfectly sane--she knew that well enough! As for her calling herself mad, that was a mere figure of speech. Of course, in a sense she had been mad to do what she had done, and he was glad that she now understood this, but her saying so simply begged the whole question, and left him no wiser than he was before.

There was a long, tense silence between them. Then Mr. Tapster slowly rose from his armchair and faced his wife.

"I see," he said, "that William was right. I mean, I suppose I may take it that that young fellow has gone and left you?"

"Yes," she said, with a curious indifference, "he has gone and left me.

His father made him take a job out in Brazil just after the case was through."

"And what have you been doing since then?" asked Mr. Tapster suspiciously. "How have you been living?"

"His father gives me a pound a week." Flossy still spoke with that curious indifference. "I tried to get something to do"--she hesitated, then offered the lame explanation, "just to have something to do, for I've been awfully lonely and miserable, James. But I don't seem to be able to get anything."

"If you had written to Mr. Greenfield or to William, they would have told you that I had arranged for you to have an allowance," he said, and then again he fell into silence....

Mr. Tapster was seeing a vision of himself magnanimous, forgiving,--taking the peccant Flossy back to his heart, and becoming once more, in a material sense, comfortable! If he acceded to her wish, if he made up his mind to forgive her, he would have to begin life all over again, move away from c.u.mberland Crescent to some distant place where the story was not known,--perhaps to Clapham, where he had spent his boyhood.

But how about Maud? How about William? How about the very considerable expense to which he had been put in connection with the divorce proceedings? Was all that money to be wasted?

Mr. Tapster suddenly saw the whole of his little world rising up in judgment, smiling pityingly at his folly and weakness. During the whole of a long and of what had been, till this last year, a very prosperous life, Mr. Tapster had always steered his safe course by what may be called the compa.s.s of public opinion, and now, when navigating an unknown sea, he could not afford to throw that compa.s.s overboard, so----

"No," he said. "No, Flossy. It would not be right for me to take you back. _It wouldn't do._"

"Wouldn't it?" she asked piteously. "Oh! James, don't say no like that, all at once! People do forgive each other--sometimes. I don't ask you to be as kind to me as you were before; only to let me come home and see after the children!"

But Mr. Tapster shook his head. The children! Always the children! He noticed, even now, that she didn't say a word of wanting to come back to _him_; and yet he had been such a kind, nay, if Maud were to be believed, such a foolishly indulgent, husband.

And then Flossy looked so different. Mr. Tapster felt as if a stranger were standing there before him. Her appearance of poverty shocked him.

Had she looked well and prosperous, he would have felt injured, and yet her pinched face and shabby clothes certainly repelled him. So again he shook his head, and there came into his face a look which Flossy had always known in the old days to spell finality; when he again spoke she saw that her knowledge had not misled her.

"I don't want to be unkind," he said ponderously. "If you will only go to William, or write to him if you would rather not go to the office,"--Mr. Tapster did not like to think that anyone once closely connected with him should "look like that" in his brother's office,--"he will tell you what you had better do. I'm quite ready to make you a handsome allowance--in fact, it's all arranged. You need not have anything more to do with that fellow's father--an Army Colonel, isn't he?--and his pound a week; but William thinks, and I must say I agree, that you ought to go back to your maiden name, Flossy, as being more fair to me."