"It's Mr Harold Devitt, miss."
"Harold Devitt! Where does he come from?" asked Mavis of Mrs Budd, who had a genius for gleaning the gossip of the place.
"Melkbridge. He's the eldest son of Mr Montague Devitt, a very rich gentleman. Mr Harold lives at Mrs Buck's with a male nurse to look after him, poor fellow."
Mrs Budd went on talking, but Mavis did not hear what she was saying. Mention of the name of Devitt was the spark that set alight a raging conflagration in her being. She had lost a happy married life with Windebank, to be as she now was, entirely owing to the Devitts. Now it was all plain enough—so plain that she wondered how she had not seen it before. It was the selfish action of the Devitts, who wished to secure Windebank for their daughter, which had prevented Montague from giving Mavis the message that Windebank had given to him. It was the Devitts who had not taken her into their house, because they feared how she might meet Windebank in Melkbridge. It was the Devitts who had given her work in a boot factory, which resulted in her meeting with Perigal. It was the Devitts, in the person of Victoria, who had prevented Perigal from keeping his many times repeated promises to marry Mavis. The Devitts had blighted her life. Black hate filled her heart, overflowed and poisoned her being. She hungered to be revenged on these Devitts, to repay them with heavy interest for the irreparable injury to her life for which she believed them responsible. Then, she remembered how tenderly Montague Devitt had always spoken of his invalid boy Harold; a soft light had come into his eyes on the few occasions on which Mavis had asked after him. A sudden resolution possessed her, to be immediately weakened by re-collections of Montague's affection for his son. Then a procession of the events in her life, which were for ever seared into her memory, passed before her mind's eye—the terror that possessed her when she learned that she was to be a mother; her interview with Perigal at Dippenham; her first night in London, when she had awakened in the room in the Euston Road; Mrs Gowler's; her days of starvation in Halverton Street; the death and burial, not only of her boy, but of her love for and faith in Perigal—all were remembered. Mavis's mind was made up. She went to her bedroom, where, with infinite deliberation, she dressed for going out.
"Mr Harold Devitt!" she said, when she came upon him waiting on his tricycle by the foolish little monument raised to the memory of one of Alfred the Great's victories over invading Danes.
The man raised his hat, while he looked intently at Mavis.
"I have to thank you for almost the dearest treasure I've ever possessed. Do you remember Jill?"
"Of course: I wondered if it might prove to be she when I first saw her. But is your name, by any chance, Miss Keeves?"
Mavis nodded.
"I've often wondered if I were ever going to meet you. And when I saw you about—-"