So Nevill Tyson had left his wife.  This was the most exciting act in the drama that had entertained Drayton Parva for two years.  He had brought down the house.  Presently it seemed that Drayton Parva was not unprepared for the catastrophe.  Miss Batchelor was sadly afraid that something of this sort had been going on for long enough.  But she had not condemned Nevill Tyson wholesale and without a hearing; in these cases there are always faults on both sides.  A man as much in love with his wife as he was would never have left her without some grounds. (I cannot think why Miss Batchelor, being so clever, didn’t see through Tyson; but there is a point at which the cleverness of the cleverest woman ceases.) Anyhow, if Mrs. Nevill Tyson was as innocent as one was bound to suppose, why did she not come back to Drayton, to her mother?  That was the proper thing for her to do under the circumstances.

Have you ever sat by the seashore playing with pebbles in an idle mood?  You are not aiming at anything, you are much too lazy to aim; but some god directs your arm, and, without thinking, you hit something that, ten to one, you never would have hit if you had thought about it.  After that your peace is gone; you feel that you can never leave the spot till you have hit that particular object again, with deliberate intent.  So Miss Batchelor, sitting by the shore of the great ocean of Truth, began by throwing stones aimlessly about; and other people (being without sin) picked them up and aimed them at Mrs. Nevill Tyson.  Sometimes they hit her, but more often they missed.  They were clumsy.  Then Miss Batchelor joined in; and, because she found that she was more skillful than the rest, she began, first to take a languid interest in the game, then to play as if her life depended on it.  She aimed with mathematical precision, picking out all the tiny difficult places that other people missed or grazed.  Amongst them they had ended by burying Mrs. Nevill Tyson up to her neck in a fairly substantial pile of pebbles.  It only needed one more stone to complete the work.  Still, as I said before, Mrs. Nevill Tyson’s enemies were not particularly anxious to throw it.

This was reserved for another hand.

It was impossible for Mrs. Wilcox to live, even obscurely, in Drayton Parva without hearing some garbled version of the current rumor.  At first she was a little shocked at finding her son-in-law under a cloud.  But if there is one truth more indisputable than another, it is that every cloud has a handsome silver lining to it. (Though, indeed, from Mrs. Wilcox’s account of the matter, it was impossible to tell which was the lining and which was the cloud.) The more she thought of it the more she felt that there was nothing in it.  There must be some misunderstanding somewhere.  Her optimism, rooted in ignorance, and watered with vanity, had become a sort of hardy perennial.

Then it came to Mrs. Wilcox’s knowledge that certain reflections had been made on her daughter’s conduct.  Mrs. Nevill Tyson was said to be making good use of her liberty.  No names had been mentioned in Mrs. Wilcox’s hearing, but she knew perfectly well what had given rise to these ridiculous reports.  It was the conspicuous attention which Sir Peter had insisted on paying Mrs. Nevill Tyson.  Not that there was anything to be objected to in an old gentleman’s frank admiration for a young (and remarkably pretty) married woman.  No doubt Sir Peter had been very indiscreet in his expression of it.  What with calling on her in private and paying her the most barefaced compliments in public, he had made her the talk of the county.  Mrs. Wilcox went further:  she was firmly convinced that Sir Peter had fallen a hopeless victim to her daughter’s attractions, and she had derived a great deal of gratification from the flattering thought.  But now that Molly was being compromised by the old fellow’s attentions, it was another matter.

That anybody else could have compromised her by his attentions did not once occur to Mrs. Wilcox.  By its magnificent unlikelihood, the idea that Sir Peter Morley, M.P., was fascinated by her daughter extinguished every other.  So possessed was Mrs. Wilcox by the idea of Sir Peter that she had never thought of Stanistreet.  In any case Stanistreet was the last person she would have thought of.  He came and went without her notice, a familiar, and therefore insignificant, fact of her daily life.

Of course Molly was a desperate little flirt; but it was absurd that her flirtations should be made responsible for “this temporary separation.”  (That was the mild phrase by which Mrs. Wilcox described Tyson’s desertion of his wife.) As for her encouraging Sir Peter in her husband’s absence, that was all nonsense.  Mrs. Wilcox was a woman of the world, and she would have passed the whole thing off with a laugh, but that, really, the reports were so scandalous.  They actually declared that her daughter had been seen going about with Sir Peter in the most open and shameless manner, ever since she had been left to her own devices.

Well, Mrs. Wilcox could disprove that by the irrefragable logic of facts.

It was high time something should be done.  Her plan was to go quietly and call on Miss Batchelor, and mention the facts in a casual way.  She would not mention Sir Peter.

So with the idea of Sir Peter in her head and a letter from Molly in her pocket, Mrs. Wilcox called on Miss Batchelor.  There was nothing extraordinary in that, for the ladies were in the habit of exchanging half-yearly visits, and Mrs. Wilcox was about due.

She stood a little bit in awe of a woman who took up all sorts of dreadful subjects as easily as you take up an acquaintance, and had such works as “The Principles of Psychology” lying about as the light literature of her drawing-room table.  But Miss Batchelor was much more nervous than her visitor, therefore Mrs. Wilcox had the advantage at once.

She knew perfectly well what she was going to do.  She was not going to make a fuss; that would do more harm than good.  She had simply to mention the facts in a casual way, without mentioning Sir Peter.  As for the separation, that was not to be taken seriously for a moment.

She began carelessly.  “I heard from Molly this morning.”

“Indeed?  Good news, I hope?”

“Very good news.  Except that she’s disappointed me.  She’s not coming to Thorneytoft after all.”

“I didn’t know she was expected.”

“Well, I wanted her to run down and entertain me a little, now that she can get away.”

“It would be rather a sacrifice for her to leave town just at the beginning of the season.”

“That’s it.  She has such hosts of engagements ­always going out somewhere.  She tells me she thinks nothing of five theatres in one week.”

Miss Batchelor raised her eyebrows.

“She must be very much stronger than she was at Thorneytoft.”

“She’s never been so well in her life.  Thorneytoft didn’t agree with her at all.  She’s been a different woman since they left it.” (This to guard against any suspicion of an attraction in the neighborhood.) “Nevill was never well there either.”

“I never thought it would suit Mr. Tyson.”

“No; it wasn’t the life for him at all.  He’s got too much go in him to settle down anywhere in the country.  Look how he’s roamed about the world.” (Now was her opportunity.) “You know, Miss Batchelor, there’s a great deal of nonsense talked about this separation.”

“There’s a great deal of nonsense talked about most things in this place.”

“Well ­but really, if you think of it, what is there to talk about?  He’s just gone away in a huff, and ­and he’ll come back in another.  You’ll see.  He has a very peculiar temper, has Nevill; and Molly’s too ­too suscept ­too emotional.  People can’t always hit it off together.”

“No ­”

“No.  And I think it’s a very good plan to separate for a time.  For a time, of course.  It’s her own wish.”

(Oh, Mrs. Wilcox!  But strict accuracy is an abject virtue when pride and the honor of a family are at stake.)

“That’s all very well, my dear Mrs. Wilcox, but in the meanwhile people will talk.”

“That won’t break Molly’s heart.  She’d snap her fingers at them.  And the more they talk, the more she’ll go her own way.  That’s Molly all over.  You can’t turn her by talking, but she’d go through fire and water for any one she loves.”

Poor vulgar, silly Mrs. Wilcox!  But try her on the subject of her daughter, and she rang true.

Miss Batchelor smiled.  She didn’t know about going through fire; but Mrs. Nevill had certainly been playing with the element, and got her fingers badly scorched too.

“Well,” said she, “of course, so long as Mrs. Nevill Tyson doesn’t break her heart over it.”

“Does it look as if she were breaking her heart?  Five theatres in one week.”

“No; I can’t say I think it does.”

“Shockingly dissipated, isn’t she?”

“Well ­rather more dissipated than we are in Drayton Parva.  You must miss her dreadfully, Mrs. Wilcox?”

“I don’t mind that so long as she’s happy.  You see, it’s not as if she hadn’t friends.  I know she’s well looked after.”

Mrs. Wilcox felt that she was making a remarkably good case of it.  And she had not once mentioned Sir Peter.

All was well so long as you did not mention Sir Peter.

“I’m very glad to hear it.”

“Of course I want her to get away out of it all.  I know that people are making very strange remarks about her staying ­”

“They might make stranger remarks if she came, that’s one consolation.  Still ­”

“Well, Miss Batchelor, the child is perfectly willing to come if I want her.  But ­er ­er ­a friend” ­(Mrs. Wilcox was determined to be discreet, and leave no loophole for scandal) ­“a friend has strongly advised her to stay.”

“Oh, no doubt she is perfectly right.  Sir Peter is in town again, I believe?”

Miss Batchelor said it abruptly, as if she were trying to change the subject.  And at the mention of Sir Peter Mrs. Wilcox lost her head and fluttered into the trap.  There are fallacies in the logic of facts.

“No, no,” she said, getting up to go.  “It was Captain Stanistreet I meant.”

Again Miss Batchelor smiled.

This was proof positive ­the last stone.