Mrs. Flight what they thought of
Mrs. Davies, and Mrs. Flight knew it, still she was not unwilling to let
Mira suppose that she was now enjoying their confidences even while she
referred to other authorities by the dozen as condemning or deploring
Mira's conduct, and a stormy scene followed, ending in tears and
reproaches,--much heat, followed by chilling cold.

For the following fortnight Almira's intimacy was transferred to Mrs.
Darling, and from going to spend the night with Mira, Mrs. Flight took
to revolving in mind her singular observations while she was there.
There had been a thrilling, a delicious, a mysterious and romantic
occurrence. Somebody twice came and whistled a strange, soft melody
under the window and tapped as with a cane, gently, stealthily, a signal
that sounded like Rattat _tat_, rattat _tat_, just once repeated, and
Mrs. Davies trembled all over and grew icily cold, and begged Mrs.
Flight to go to the window and say, "Go away, or I'll call the guard,"
and when pressed for explanation Mira moaned hysterically and said, but
Mrs. Flight must never, never tell, that there was once a young man whom
she had known long before who had got desperate on her account, for she
couldn't return his love, and he had run away from home and enlisted,
and she feared that he was there now, though she had never seen him and
never wanted to see him, and it became Mrs. Flight's belief that it was
no one less than that handsome young fellow, Brannan, who Captain Devers
said was drinking himself to death. And now that Mira had withdrawn from
her the confidences of the month gone by and was recklessly driving the
road to ruin, flouting her admonitions, what more natural than that Mrs.
Flight should forget her own vows of secrecy and conclude it time to
seek other advice? Mrs. Darling would have been her first confidante in
this revelation, but they, too, had once been devotedly intimate and had
now drifted apart. They were no longer on anything more than merely
frigidly friendly terms, smiling and kissing in public and hiding
womanfully their wounds, yet confiding to friends how much they had been
disappointed in the other's character, if not actually deceived. Mrs.
Flight found a confidante in the chaplain's wife, a woman simply swamped
under an overload of best intentions. It was Bulwer who declared that
"It is difficult to say who do the most harm, enemies with the worst
intentions or friends with the best," but Bulwer