"About two months."
She was right then. It had been since that night. It had been her own doing. She had driven him to her.
"Since he went to Hampstead then?"
"Yes."
"Who was she?"
"His landlady's daughter, I think, or a niece. She waited on him and—she nursed him when he was ill."
Jane drew in her breath with an almost audible sound. Nicky had sunk into his chair in his attitude of vicarious, shamefaced misery.
It made her rally. "Nicky," she said, "why do you look like that? I don't think it's nice of you to sit there, giving him away by making gloomy faces, in a chair. Why shouldn't he marry his landlady's daughter if he likes? You ought to stand up for him and say she's charming. She is. She must be; or he wouldn't have done it."
"He ought not to have done it."
"But he has. It had to happen. Nothing else could have happened."