"Has he offered you more than you receive here?"
"We shall be richer by some hundreds a year."
"I am sorry," said Betty, with heightened colour. "Lord Vauxhall is shrewd. Had you seen fit to consult me, I should have implored you to remain where you are. Money is no object to you."
"True. But preferment——"
"Preferment! Promotion! That implies service. You have only been here eighteen months. There will be gossip about this."
"As if I cared for gossip."
"We will say no more about it," said Betty; "but I tell you frankly that I am hurt!"
She turned and left the room. That he should not have trusted her was hard to be borne; yet later she made allowances for him. Doubtless, Lord Vauxhall had insisted upon secrecy. Her husband's sense of honour had closed his lips. She had been unjust, unkind, a disloyal wife. She had even insulted him, hinting that an increase of income had lured him from duty. At this point she bathed her eyes, arranged her hair, and ran downstairs to beg pardon and entreat forgiveness. Archibald was magnanimous.
"You have shown the right feeling, dear Betty, which I knew you possessed. I am acting according to my lights."
Next day the Rector of St. Anne's wired to Mark to come to town; Mark replied that he had had a bad bout of influenza, in those days a new and virulent disease. Archibald, nervous about his Lenten sermons but laughing to scorn the possibility of catching influenza, went down to Weybridge in the afternoon. He found Mark looking pale and thin, but otherwise in good spirits, and on the high road to recovery.