A long silence followed, during which she did not move and Mr. Van
Torp steadily paced the floor.
'I didn't tell a fib, either,' she said at last. 'It's charity, in its way.'
'Certainly,' assented her friend. 'What isn't either purchase-money or interest, or taxes, or a bribe, or a loan, or a premium, or a present, or blackmail, must be charity, because it must be something, and it isn't anything else you can name.'
'A present may be a charity,' said Lady Maud, still thoughtful.
'Yes,' answered Mr. Van Torp. 'It may be, but it isn't always.'
He walked twice the length of the room before he spoke again.
'Do you think it's really to be war this time?' he asked, stopping beside the table. 'Because if it is, I'll see a lawyer before I go to Derbyshire.'
Lady Maud looked up with a bright smile. Clearly she had been thinking of something compared with which the divorce court was a delightful contrast.
'I don't know,' she answered. 'It must come sooner or later, because he wants to be free to marry that woman, and as he has not the courage to cut my throat, he must divorce me—if he can!'
'I've sometimes thought he might take the shorter way,' said Van Torp.