"I see," he said, "that William was right. I mean, I suppose I may take it that that young fellow has gone and left you?"
"Yes," she said, with a curious indifference, "he has gone and left me. His father made him take a job out in Brazil just after the case was through."
"And what have you been doing since then?" asked Mr. Tapster suspiciously. "How have you been living?"
"His father gives me a pound a week." Flossy still spoke with that curious indifference. "I tried to get something to do"—she hesitated, then offered the lame explanation—"just to have something to do, for I've been
awfully lonely and miserable, James; but I don't seem to be able to get anything."
"If you had written to Mr. Greenfield or to William, they would have told you that I had arranged for you to have an allowance," he said, and then again he fell into silence....
Mr. Tapster was seeing a vision of himself, magnanimous, forgiving—taking the peccant Flossy back to his heart and becoming once more, in a material sense, comfortable! If he acceded to her wish, if he made up his mind to forgive her, he would have to begin life all over again, move away from Cumberland Crescent to some distant place where the story was not known—perhaps to Clapham, where he had spent his boyhood.
But how about Maud? How about William? How about the very considerable expense to which he had been put in connection with the divorce proceedings? Was all that money to be wasted? Mr. Tapster suddenly saw the whole of his little world rising up in judgment, smiling pityingly at his folly and weakness. During the whole of a long and of what had been, till this last year, a very prosperous life, Mr. Tapster had always steered his safe course by what may be called the compass of public opinion, and now, when navigating an unknown sea, he could not afford to throw that compass overboard, so——
"No," he said; "no, Flossy. It would not be right for me to take you back. It wouldn't do."
"Wouldn't it?" she asked piteously. "Oh, James, don't say no like that, all at once! People do forgive each other—sometimes. I don't ask you to be as kind to me as you were before—only to let me come home and see after the children!"