"What--you mean the woman we saw at the Trocadero?"
"Yes--he was so struck by the coincidence of their both being at Charing Cross with luggage at the same time that he just walked quietly in and saw them both go off together."
"Together--in the same carriage--a reserved compartment. And Harry says he bought a sheaf of papers and positively threw them at her."
"It's a mystery!" ejaculated Julia, blankly. "His letter to mother was everything that a letter could be. He laughs at himself ever so for going away on a mad errand, suggests that she should join him in a few days' time, and signs himself, 'till we meet, your fond and devoted Alfred.'"
"I tell you what it is, Ju," said Maudie, dropping her young married woman air and becoming Maudie Whittaker once more, "I'm sorry to say it because he's my father, but between you and me, daddy's a regular bad lot."
"It does seem so," said Julia, "and the curious part of it is that he looks so respectable. Mother won't believe it, you know. I was talking to her only to-day, she won't believe a word against him."
"Well, so much the better for her, that's what Harry says, but we came to tell her--"
"Oh no, I wouldn't tell her for the world. Let her go on believing in him as long as she can; the awakening will come soon enough."
"Then what did you come for?" asked Julia, practical as usual.
"My dear, I thought if daddy had gone off and perhaps left mother a letter to say that he was never coming back, she would want somebody to stand by her--and Harry and I are prepared to do that."
"And where do I come in?" asked Julia, a little scornfully.
"Oh, Ju, darling, you are always the practical common-sense one, you are a tower of strength, and many are the times I have leaned upon you; but if the worst had happened you might have been too stunned yourself to help mother very much. I think a woman needs a man at such a crisis of her life."
"There isn't going to be any crisis," said Julia, quite prosaically, "there isn't going to be any crisis. But it was nice of you to come, and I do think you and Harry are two dear things. There's an explanation to all this. There's nothing of the real bad lot about daddy, and as for mother--there's no doubt about it, he worships her. Don't tell me that when a man is tired of a woman he brings home dark sables without so much as a hint that they will be welcome--it isn't human nature, at all events it isn't man nature."