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only be found out if he made some stupid mistake, like the people whose unhappy lives were told in Historic Days at the Assizes. He was not going to make any stupid mistake. Mrs. Summers was a harmless soul enough, but she had the usual besetting sin of charwomen⁠—inquisitiveness. Goodness knows what she might not find out for herself. Or perhaps his wife would say something that would set her tongue wagging in the other houses in which she worked. It was only to be expected. Mr. Marble did not mind being gossiped about⁠—he rather liked it, in the ordinary way, in fact. But he would have no gossip about himself nowadays. He simply could not afford it. He could foresee with vivid clearness what would happen. His wife would let fall a careless word or two, and Mrs. Summers would repeat them equally carelessly but with a lavish percentage of imaginative detail. The woman who heard her would tell someone else, and before anyone could say Jack Robinson there would be all sorts of tales flying round. There was plenty of gossip about him already, thanks to the new furniture; any addition might result in disaster⁠—anonymous letters to the police, or a committee of neighbours coming secretly to investigate. No one would know, of course, anything about the real state of affairs, but Mr. Marble did not want there to be any suspicion, however baseless, attached to him. For his position was not absolutely secure. If the interest of the police were sufficiently roused even for them to make a casual inspection of all his financial arrangements they might easily find something to interest them regarding certain banknotes that had passed into his possession one stormy night last winter. And it was not mere money that was at stake, nor comfort, nor even Empire furniture. What was in peril was his life! Much reading of books about crime had given him a good idea of the formalities of the condemned cell and of the scaffold. And he writhed in anguish at the thought. He could not possibly run any risks. Already in imagination he was being torn from his bed one bleak morning, and dragged fainting along a grey corridor to a tarred shed wherein awaited him a trapdoor and a noose. There was sweat on his face as he forced this picture on one side and turned to face his wife.

“No,” he said, “we don’t want any charwomen in here. You will have to manage on your own.”

Even Mrs. Marble expostulated at this arbitrary decision.

“But, Will, dear,” she said, “I don’t think you understand. I’m not asking for anything, I’m not really. You’re giving me nine pounds a week housekeeping money, and that’s a lot more than I can spend at all. We could have a maid to live in with all that money, two maids perhaps, with caps and aprons and all. But I don’t want that. They’d be too much trouble. I only want old Mrs. Summers to come in three or four days a week and help me with the rough work. It’s too much for me, really and truly it is.”

“What, in this little house?”

“Of course I could do it, if I had to, Will. But it does seem silly, doesn’t it, that I should have to sweep and dust and wash up, when there are lots of people who would be thankful to have the chance to do it for me? And my back still aches from lifting those mattresses yesterday.”

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Marble.

Mrs. Marble was incapable of sustaining an argument for long. She had already made two speeches, each of them thrice the length of any of her usual remarks, and she could do no more for the present. She relapsed into unhappy silence, while Mr. Marble battled with the train of thought that had been raised by his wife’s suggestion. His imagination tortured him with peculiar malignity for the next few minutes.

Mrs. Marble’s mind was working, too. That day had seen the arrival of the first of the things she had bought last Saturday⁠—large boxes delivered by carrier, and full of the most delectable things her imagination had ever pictured. She had lingered over them lovingly. There were hats, wonderful hats, which suited her marvellously, although, as she confessed to herself, she did not much care for the fashionable cloche shape with its severely-untrimmed lines. There were jumpers, matronly jumpers, which she realized with amazement looked very well on her although up till then she had only considered jumpers as suitable for young girls. There were boxes and boxes of underclothing, whose price had horrified her at first, until she had taken heart of grace from the knowledge of all the money there was to spend. Naturally, she had not yet received the tailored costume and the coatfrock for which she had been measured by a woman’s tailor who had appeared startlingly in the shop as she finished her other purchases⁠—startlingly, that is to say, to Mrs. Marble, unacquainted with the commission-sharing system of ladies’ shops and with the conveniences of the telephone.

But that costume and the coatfrock would not have been any good to her even if she had had it. Mrs. Marble had indeed roused herself to put on some of the underclothing, priceless things, warm and weightless, costing as much as her husband had earned in a month before all this started happening, but she had not the heart to put on a pair of the thick silk stockings while she had so much housework still to be done, and she wore over the wonderful underclothing her usual draggled housefrock. With the other things arriving shortly she might as well have put on her best frock, but she had not the heart to do that with so much washing-up to be done that evening. Mrs. Marble felt aggrieved. Besides, she was tired, and her back really did hurt.

A day or two ago she had pictured herself sitting