She read Leslie’s note.
“Dear Jane,
“Won’t you come round and see me? I’ve got the whole day off, and there is a tremendous lot that I want to talk to you about, not as a poor apology for a policewoman, but as a very human girl who would love to smooth over some of the rough road you are treading. Lucretia has orders to say that I’m out and to admit nobody. I can give you a homemade lunch, and can promise that you will suffer no ill-effects therefrom. Or we can lunch regally at or near the Carlton. Please come.”
Jane scribbled a note, which was delivered to the waiting messenger, locked away her half-finished letter in the bureau, and went up into her room to change. Lucretia had no sooner ushered her into Leslie when:
“Did you see Peter? What happened? I’m so worried about it. I nearly called you up this morning.”
“I shouldn’t have known,” said Leslie. “At least, I should have known he’d been arrested.”
“Arrested?”
This was obviously news to Jane Raytham, for her face went white. Leslie explained what had happened.
“How could she? How could she?” demanded Jane Raytham vehemently. “It was wicked! But how like her! Poor Peter—he lives everlastingly in rough seas.”
And then the note of anger in her voice turned to one of anxiety.
“Did Anita tell him anything?”
“Not what he wanted to know,” replied Leslie.
The visitor was quick to understand the meaning of that reply.
“Do you know why he went?”
“He went to find his child.”
The beautiful face of Jane Raytham flashed a delicate pink, and paled again.
“My child,” she said, in a low voice. “I suppose you despise me, don’t you?”
Leslie shook her head.
“No; why should I? If I despised every woman who had a baby—”
“I don’t mean that. But I allowed them to take it away. I didn’t want to, Leslie; will you believe that? I wanted to keep the child with me—I fought hard for him. The compromise was a desperately weak one, but at least I gained that point.”
“What was the compromise?”
Lady Raytham smiled faintly.
“If you didn’t despise me before you’ll despise me now,” she said.
She was at the fireplace in her old attitude, arm along the mantel, forehead resting on the back of her hand, her eyes fixed on the fire.
“They agreed to that. If it was a girl I should keep her; if it was a boy, he should go away. A mad, wicked idea, so grossly unfair to the child! But I’m terribly tender towards girls. I can’t see a girl suffer without a shrivelled-up feeling inside. I wonder if you know what my girlhood was—if it had been a girl I should have kept her with me and braved everything. But it was a boy—a wonderful boy—they told me of it afterwards. I wish I’d seen him, known him, if only for a day, but then I should never have allowed him to go.”
She turned her face away and her shoulders shook. Leslie sat at the desk and drew fantastic, meaningless arabesques upon her blotting-pad; and when that storm of sobbing had died down:
“I suppose it is absurd to ask you if there is any clue by which the child could be traced? Of course you’ve explored every avenue. You’ve discovered nothing?”
Jane was manipulating her handkerchief, her back towards her, and there was finality in the shake of her head.
“No—I’ve already tried. I didn’t tell Anita, but for months I’ve had detectives searching. I thought he was in a happy home, you know; I never dreamt that he’d been left—”
She could not go on. It was quite a long time before she mastered her emotion.
“Druze told me that night—that horrible night she went away. Laughed in my face when I asked her where the child was. That is why I went after her. I guessed that she had gone to Anita’s, and when I found her dead on the path I was frantic. I thought she must have some hidden paper that would tell me. But when I searched there was nothing—nothing!”
Jane Raytham turned her face away from the girl.
“I have no justification—none,” she said. “I was just wickedly selfish. Even if he’d been illegitimate I could not be excused. Illegitimate!” She smiled bitterly. “Thank God, I’ve had no children since I married Raytham! He was not keen about children, or about me for the matter of that. Our married life has been a sort of—modified celibacy!”
She took down a photograph from the mantelshelf.
“This is Mr. Coldwell, isn’t it?”
Leslie nodded.
“It would be a great feather in his cap if he—arrested me for bigamy.”
“Mr. Coldwell is not frantically keen on feathers of that kind, Jane,” said the girl loyally.
Jane put down the photograph and dropped into the nearest armchair, curling her legs up under her.
“I’m a beast! I’m putting the worst construction on everything; taking the most uncharitable view of everybody.”
She smiled pitifully, reached out her hand for her bag that lay on the table, and snapped open a diamond-encrusted cigarette case.
“I tried drugging once,” she said. “A white powder you sniff up your nose. For some reason it made me deathly sick, and I didn’t pursue the practice. But I envy people who can find relief and forgetfulness.”
“Another good way,” said Leslie brutally, “is to put your head on a railway track when a large, fat freight train is due! You’d accomplish the same result, and give just as much trouble to other people. And presently, when your boy emerges from the mist, as he will, he would come to a mother who was hardly worth finding.”
Jane was laughing quietly.
“You’re a weird girl. How old are you?”
Leslie told her.
“I wish Peter was in love with you. He must find happiness somewhere or other.”
“Do I come into this?” asked Leslie dryly. “Or are Peter and you the only two people in the world whose feelings count?”
She stopped Jane’s penitence with
