Closing it softly behind him, he walked out, burdened as he had never been in all his life, and made his way round the corner to wait there for an early cab to come by.
Thus had passed Montague Dartie in the forty-fifth year of his age from the house which he had called his own.
When Winifred came down, and realised that he was not in the house, her first feeling was one of dull anger that he should thus elude the reproaches she had carefully prepared in those long wakeful hours.

He had gone off to Newmarket or Brighton, with that woman as likely as not.

Disgusting! Forced to a complete reticence before Imogen and the servants, and aware that her father's nerves would never stand the disclosure, she had been unable to refrain from going to Timothy's that afternoon, and pouring out the story of the pearls to Aunts Juley and Hester in utter confidence.

It was only on the following morning that she noticed the disappearance of that photograph.

What did it mean?
Careful examination of her husband's relics prompted the thought that he had gone for good.