e
meddling with them." Her unlucky visit to Romayne at the hotel had been
a subject of dispute between the two friends--and this referred to it.
"You shall have the address," my lady added in her grandest manner. She
wrote it on a piece of paper, and left the room.

Easily irritated, Lady Loring had the merit of being easily appeased.
That meanest of all vices, the vice of sulkiness, had no existence
in her nature. In five minutes she regretted her little outburst of
irritability. For five minutes more she waited, on the chance that
Stella might be the first to seek a reconciliation. The interval passed,
and nothing happened. "Have I really offended her?" Lady Loring asked
herself. The next moment she was on her way back to Stella. The room was
empty. She rang the bell for the maid.

"Where is Miss Eyrecourt?"

"Gone out, my lady."

"Did she leave no message?"

"No, my lady. She went away in a great hurry."

Lady Loring at once drew the conclusion that Stella had rashly taken the
affair of the General's family into her own hands. Was it possible to
say how this most imprudent proceeding might end? After hesitating and
reflecting, and hesitating again, Lady Loring's anxiety got beyond her
control. She not only decided on following Stella, but, in the excess of
her nervous apprehension, she took one of the men-servants with her, in
case of emergency!

CHAPTER XII.

THE GENERAL'S FAMILY.

NOT always remarkable for arriving at just conclusions, Lady Loring had
drawn the right inference this time. Stella had stopped the first cab
that passed her, and had directed the driver to Camp's Hill, Islington.

The aspect of the miserable little street, closed at one end, and
swarming with dirty children quarreling over their play, daunted her for
the moment. Even the cabman, drawing up at the entrance to the street,
expressed his opinion that it was a queer sort of place for a young lady
to venture into alone. Stella thought of Romayne. Her firm persuasion
that she was helping him to perform an act of mercy, which was (to
his mind) an act of atonement as well, roused her courage. She boldly
approached the open door of No. 10, and knocked on it with her parasol.

The tangled gray hair and grimy face of a hideous old woman showed
themselves slowly at the end of the passage, rising from the
strong-smelling obscurity of the kitchen regions. "What do you want?"
said the half-seen witch of the London slums. "Does Madame M