o pursue her acquaintance as his
mother had been to drop it.

Claire Gifford sat bolt upright on her seat, the slip of cardboard
clasped within her palms, and as she sat she thought many thoughts. A
physiognomist would have been interested to trace the progress of those
thoughts on the eloquent young face. There was surprise written there,
and obvious gratification, and a demure, very feminine content; later on
came pride, and a general stiffening of determination. The spoiled
child of liberty and the High School-Mistress of the future had fought a
heated battle, and the High School-Mistress had won.

Deliberately turning aside her eyes, so that no word of that printed
address should obtrude itself on her notice, Claire tore the card
sharply across and across, and threw the fragments out of the window.

A moment later she whistled through the tube, and instructed the
chauffeur as to her change of address.

Adieu to the Fanshawes, and all such luxuries of the past. Heigh-ho for
hard work, and lodgings at fifteen shillings a week!

CHAPTER FIVE.

MISS RHODES, POISONER.

It is a somewhat dreary feeling to arrive even at a friend's house
before seven o'clock in the morning, and be received by sleepy-looking
people who have obviously been torn unwillingly from their beds in
deference to the precepts of hospitality, but it is infinitely worse to
arrive at a lodging-house at the same hour, ring several times at the
bell before a dingy servant can be induced to appear, and to realise a
moment later that in a tireless parlour you perceive your journey's
goal!

Claire Gifford felt a creep of the blood at the sight of that parlour,
though if her first introduction had been at night, when the curtains
were drawn and the lamps lit, she would have found it cosy enough.
There was no sign of her room-mate; perhaps it was too much to expect
her to get up at so early an hour to welcome a stranger, but Claire
_had_ expected it, felt perfectly sure that--had positions been
reversed--she herself would have taken pains to deck both herself and
her room in honour of the occasion, and so felt correspondingly
downcast.

Presently she found herself following the dingy maid up three separate
nights of stairs, and arriving at a tiny box of a bedroom on the top
floor. There was a bed, a washstand, a chest of drawers doing service
as a dressing-table, two chairs and a sloping roof. Claire would have
been quite disappointed if t