It is a great mistake to think that coldness and calculation always go together. Katty Winslow was calculating, but she was not cold. For once she had been quite honest when writing that odd little postscript to her letter of thanks for Godfrey Pavely's wedding present. Godfrey had, in very truth, been her first love, and she had suffered acutely in her heart, as well as in her pride, when he had run away. Even now, she felt as if there were a strong, secret, passionate link between them, and there was no day when she did not tell herself that she would have made the banker a perfect, and yes—a very happy wife.
Godfrey came into the drawing-room with a pleased, eager look on his face. He took his hostess's hand in his, and held it for perhaps a thought longer than he would have held, say, Mrs. Tropenell's hand. But the hand he now held was a soft, malleable little hand, not thin and firm, like that of Oliver's mother.
Katty was smiling at him, such a bright, friendly, pretty smile. "Sit down," she said softly. "And before we begin talking, take a cup of tea. You look very tired—and you're late, too, Godfrey. I was beginning to think that you weren't coming at all!"
And then he said something which surprised her, but which somehow chimed in quite surprisingly with what had been filling her busy, active brain of late.
"Jim Beath has been with me most of the afternoon," he spoke wearily, complainingly. "I had to ask him to lunch at the Club, and he stayed on and on."
Now the Beaths were by way of being intimate friends of Katty Winslow, and Jim Beath was a client of Godfrey Pavely.
"Oh, but that's very interesting!" she cried. "I've been wondering so much how that affair is going on—I do so hope it will be all right!"
And then, as she saw a shocked look come over her visitor's narrow, rather fleshy face, she said in a low voice, "You know how I feel about the divorce laws, Godfrey. I can't help it. They're horribly unfair—so—so ridiculous, in fact!"
As he remained silent, she went on, insisting on her own point of view far more than was her usual way when talking to her self-opinionated friend: "Don't you realise how hard it is that two people utterly unsuited to one another should have to go through that sort of horrid farce just in order to get free?"