“Tell me something about the Lextons, Mary. Where did you pick them up?” asked Lady Flora Desmond of her hostess, Mrs. Hampton. “As I looked at Mrs. Lexton during dinner, I thought I had never seen a ...

The July sun shone slantwise into the ugly, almost sordid-looking bedroom where Ivy Lexton, still only half dressed, had just begun making up her lovely face in front of a tarnished, dust-powdered toi...

“Why, there’s Mr. Rushworth! Do go over and ask him to join us for coffee.” Ivy Lexton was smiling at her husband⁠—a delicious, roguish smile. As he smiled back, he told himself with conscious satisfa...

“Do look at Mrs. Lexton! Isn’t she absolutely lovely, Miles?” “Yes, Bella⁠—and as good as she is pretty, I really do believe,” was the half-joking answer. Look at her? Rushworth had done very little e...

When Ivy came out of her stateroom at half-past eight, the great heat of the day had gone, and old Dieppe harbour was bathed in a mysterious, enchanting twilight. She had put on tonight a white chiffo...

“Look at lucky Olive Larnoch. A month ago she didn’t know where to turn for sixpence!” Ivy Lexton, and one of her young married women friends, Janet Horley, were lunching together at the Embassy Club....

It was the eighth of November, a day which, though she never realised it, altered the whole of Ivy Lexton’s life. And this was the more extraordinary because she was usually quick enough to realise th...

A long, long week went by, and it was now the evening of the 16th of November. Nurse Bradfield had been out for an hour after lunch, and while she was out Ivy had “looked after” Jervis. She made a poi...

After a good night of deep, healthy sleep, Ivy Lexton awoke. She sat up in bed and then, all at once, she remembered.⁠ ⁠… Her first sensation was one of intense, almost painfully acute, relief. True, ...

Roger Gretorex had gone back to his consulting-room after a long morning’s round. He loved his work, yet today his heart was not in it, for he was extraordinarily excited, and moved as he had never be...

As Inspector Orpington, of the Criminal Investigation Department, Scotland Yard, entered dusty, poverty-stricken Ferry Place, he made up his mind that he would be, so far as was possible in the circum...

Instead of doing what he ought to have done⁠—that is, to have sought at once the best legal aid in his power⁠—Roger Gretorex made up his mind to go back to Sussex, if only for a few hours. Ivy’s words...

As Ivy stepped down out of the telephone box, after her conversation with Roger Gretorex, she felt, though partially relieved, yet at the same time agitated and still terribly frightened. She was, ind...

John Oram was an old-fashioned solicitor of very high standing. His firm had always managed all the private business of the Rushworth family, and he was a personal friend of the client from whom he ha...

While that, to both of them, woeful conversation was going on between the mother of Roger Gretorex and the old lawyer, Ivy Lexton sat in her drawing-room, waiting impatiently for John Oram, and⁠—his c...

During the night which preceded the day when Ivy Lexton was to appear as chief witness for the Crown, she lay awake, hour after hour, dreading with an awful dread the ordeal that lay before her. Her c...

But even in a court of law, where everything, in spite of what the more ignorant section of the public may think, is arranged and prearranged, the unexpected sometimes does happen. To the amazement of...

“I took Mrs. Gretorex a nice cup of tea at seven o’clock, for I heard her moving about even before then. But the poor lady only just sipped it. She said her throat seemed swollen, so she couldn’t swal...

That same morning, the morning after the conclusion of Gretorex’s trial, Ivy awoke late. For a moment she remembered nothing, for she had gone through a very terrible strain the previous day, a greate...

And now there were but two days⁠—to be accurate, but two nights⁠—to the date fixed for Roger Gretorex’s execution. All those to whom the matter was of grave moment had given up hope, and, to the great...

The morning after these events had taken place, the Home Secretary, Sir Edward Law, was moving about his fine room in Whitehall. He felt restless and thoroughly ill at ease, and that, although he was ...

With a sudden cry of fear Ivy Lexton sat up in the Jacobean four-post bed, where she had spent a broken night. She was still plunged in sleep, but anyone standing, say, by the large half-moon window o...

As he walked up the gangway of the cross-Channel boat at Calais, Miles Rushworth’s heart was full of two women. The one was his dead sister, the other Ivy Lexton, the woman to whom he was hastening, a...

For the first few moments, spent alone by her in her bedroom, Ivy could only feel relief⁠—sheer, sobbing relief. Then there came over her a sensation of utter, numb despair. She had lost everything th...