ts,
she must have time to think.

'I decline to advise you,' she said, and she spoke with a barely
perceptive movement of her lips only. The rest of her face was stone.

'How unkind and unforgiving you are! Must people would think the loss of
a hundred thousand pounds about punishment enough for what I have done.
You don't seem to see it. But on top of that you won't refuse to promise
not to tell Horace?'

'I will not bind myself in any way whatever.'

'Not even when you know that the moment I hear of the--death I intend
to--to--'

'Make an honest man of him? Not even when I know that.'

'Do you want me to go down on my knees to you?'

Madeline glanced at the flowered fabric involved and said, 'I wouldn't,
I think.'

'And this is to hang over me the whole season? I shall enjoy
nothing--absolutely NOTHING.' The blue eyes were suddenly eclipsed
by angry tears, which the advent of a servant with cards checked as
suddenly.

'Goodbye, then, dear,' cried Mrs. Innes, as if in response to the
advancing rustle of skirts in the veranda. 'So glad to have found you
at home. Dear me, has Trilby made her way up--and I gave such particular
orders! Oh, you NAUGHTY dog!'

Chapter 3.VII.

From the complication that surged round Miss Anderson's waking hours
one point emerged, and gave her a perch for congratulation. That was
the determination she had shown in refusing to let Frederick Prendergast
leave her his money, or any part of it.

It has been said that he had outlived her tenderness, if not her care,
and this fact, which she never found it necessary to communicate to
poor Frederick himself, naturally made his desire in the matter sharply
distasteful. She was even unaware of the disposition he had made of his
ironical fortune, a reflection which brought her thankfulness that there
was something she did not know. 'If I had let him do it,' she thought,
'I should have felt compelled to tell her everything, instantly. And
think of discussing it with her!' This was quite a fortnight later, and
Mrs. Innes still occupied her remarkable position only in her own mind
and Madeline's, still knowing herself the wife of 1596 and of 1596 only,
and still unaware that 1596 was in his grave. Simla had gone on with its
dances and dinners and gymkhanas quite as if no crucial experience were
hanging over the heads of three of the people one met 'everywhere,' and
the three people continued to be met everywhere, although only one
of t