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She stopped to exhale another long breath of excitement and agitation. It was cruel to impute blame to the poor dead girl, and she felt this, but could not refrain.

‘And suddenly, after one letter full of complaint and reproach, she wrote no more. He was in active service, and could not get home. It was not so easy then to come home on leave. He wrote again and again, and when he got no answer, employed people to find her out. I can’t tell you all the things that were done—everything, so far as he knew how to do it. I didn’t know him then. I daresay he wasted a great deal of money without getting hold of the right people. He never heard anything more of her, never a word, till the other day.’

‘Then that poor young creature was—— And Joyce—Joyce!—who is Joyce? Mrs. Hayward, do you mean really that Joyce——’

‘Joyce—was his first wife: and this girl—who has the same name,—I have not seen her, I don’t know her, I can express no feeling about her,—this young lady is my husband’s daughter, Mrs. Bellendean.’