She had discarded her original theory that some long-ago romance linked Eliot Coventry and Mrs. Hilyard together. Neither of them appeared to her to be in the least thrilled by the fact of the other’s proximity in the neighbourhood, nor did either make any obvious effort to avoid or cultivate the other’s society. If they chanced to meet they exchanged civilities as the merest acquaintances might do, and gradually Ann came to believe that their knowledge of each other was based on nothing more profound than a slight friendship of many years ago, which had more or less petered out with the passage of time.
Cara, for all her quick sympathy and eager friendship, was reticent as regards the past, and Ann’s attitude towards her held an element of that loyal, enthusiastic devotion which an older woman not infrequently inspires in one considerably younger than herself—a devotion which accepts things as they are and has no wish to pry into the secrets of the past.
One circumstance of Cara’s former life had come to Ann’s knowledge unavoidably—the fact that her husband, Dene Hilyard, had ill-treated her. A most trifling accident had served to reveal it. She and Ann had been gathering roses together in the Priory garden, and, in straining up to reach a particularly lovely bloom that hung from the roof of the pergola, Cara’s thin muslin sleeve had caught on a projecting nail which had ripped it apart from shoulder to elbow. As the torn sleeve fell hack it revealed a trickle of blood where the nail’s sharp point had scored the skin, and above that, marring the whiteness of the upper arm, an ugly, discoloured scar. Cara made a hasty movement to conceal it, catching the gaping edges of the sleeve together with her hand. Then, realising that it was too late, she let them fall apart again and met Ann’s horrified eyes with a long, inscrutable gaze.
“Yes, it’s ugly, isn’t it?” she said bitterly. “All my married life was—ugly.”
“What do you mean?” Ann’s voice shook. She felt as though she knew what was coming—the story of how Cara came by that dreadful scar—and fought against the knowledge with incredulous horror.
“Dene... my husband... he’d been reading a book which described how they branded a woman... and he tried...” She broke off, shivering violently.
“No—no!” Urgently the denial sprang from Ann’s stricken lips, as though she sought by the sheer imperative violence of her disclaimer to make this horrible thing untrue.
Cara nodded her head slowly.
“It’s quite true... he used to drink... he was half mad at times. That was one of them.”
She had never again referred to the matter, nor to any other episode of her unhappy married life, but since that day Ann had always the consciousness of something unspeakably hideous which had lain in the background of Cara Hilyard’s life, marring it utterly, and the intense sympathy it aroused within her had quickened the growth of the friendship between them.