Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/122

THE BETTER SORT untouched, "they" had been in it even more than her success required. It was their skirts, their name and their reputation that, in the proceedings at hand, would bear the brunt. It was only after waiting a while that I could at last say: "You're perfectly sure then of Mrs. Brivet's intention?"

"Oh, we've had formal notice."

"And he's himself satisfied of the sufficiency?"

"Of the sufficiency?"

"Of what he has done."

She rectified. "Of what he has appeared to do."

"That is then enough?"

"Enough," she laughed, "to send him to the gallows!" To which I could only reply that all was well that ended well.

 V

for me, however, as it proved, had not ended yet. Brivet, as I have mentioned, duly reappeared to sit for me, and Mrs. Cavenham, on his arrival, as consistently went abroad. He confirmed to me that lady's news of how he had "fetched," as he called it, his wife—let me know, as decently owing to me after what had passed, on the subject, between us, that the forces set in motion had logically operated; but he made no other allusion to his late accomplice—for I now took for granted the close of the connection—than was conveyed in this intimation. He spoke—and the effect was almost droll—as if he had had, since our previous meeting, a busy and responsible year and wound up an affair (as he was accustomed to wind up affairs) involving a mass of detail; he even dropped into occasional reminiscence of what he had seen and enjoyed and disliked during a recent period of rather far-reaching adventure; but he stopped just as short as Mrs. Cavenham had done—and indeed, much shorter than she—of  110