"I shouldn't be surprised," her husband answered calmly.
His wife put her hand upon his shoulder.
"How can you employ a man like that, William?" she said, grave and grieved.
It was an old point of dispute between them. Now he took her hand and stroked it.
"My dear," he said, "when a bacteriologist has had a unique specimen under the microscope for years he's not going to abandon it for a scruple."
A few days later Mrs. Trupp was walking down Borough Lane past the Star when she saw Alf and Ruth cross each other on the pavement fifty yards in front. Neither stopped, but Alf shot a sidelong word in the woman's ear as he slid by serpent-wise. Ruth marched on with a toss of her head, and Mrs. Trupp noted the furtive look in the eyes of her husband's chaffeur as he met her glance and passed, touching his cap.
Mindful of her conversation with her husband, she followed Ruth home and boarded her instantly.
"Ruth," she asked, "I want to know something. You must tell me for your own good. Alfred's got no hold over you?"
Ruth drew in her breath with the sound, almost a hiss, of a sword snatched from its scabbard. Then slowly she relaxed.
"He's not got the sway over me not now," she said in a still voice, with lowered eyes. "Only thing he's the only one outside who knaws Captain Royal's the father of little Alice."