"It's always a woman's own fault if she has no friends, especially when she's such an attractive woman as Mrs. Crofton," said Janet shortly. She hesitated, and then added something for which she was sorry immediately afterwards: "I happen to know rather more about Mrs. Crofton than most of the people in Beechfield do."
She spoke with that touch of mysterious finality which is always so irritating to a listener who is in indifferent sympathy with a speaker.
"What d'you mean?" cried Jack fiercely. "I insist on your telling me what you mean!"
Janet Tosswill told herself with Scotch directness that she had been a fool. But if Jack was—she hardly knew how to put it to herself—so—so bewitched by Mrs. Crofton as he seemed to be, then perhaps, as they had got to this point, he had better hear the truth:
"Mrs. Crofton made herself very much talked about in the neighbourhood of the place where she and her husband settled after the War. She was so actively unkind, and made him so wretched, that at last he committed suicide. At least that is what is believed by everyone who knew them in Essex."
"I suppose a woman told you all this?" he said in a dangerously calm voice.
"Yes, it was a woman, Jack."
"Of course it was! Every woman, young or old, is jealous of her because she's so pretty and—so—so feminine, and because she has nothing about her of the clever, hard woman who is the fashion nowadays! The only person who does her justice in this place is Rosamund."
"I disapprove very much of Rosamund's silly, school-girlish, adoration of her," said Janet sharply.
She was just going to add something more when she saw Timmy slipping quietly back into the room. And all at once she felt sorry—deeply sorry—that this rather absurd scene had taken place between herself and Jack. She blamed herself for having let it come to this pass.