her gains.'

'If so, why the secrecy?'

'Mrs. Jenkins has taught you to make it as bad as possible,' burst out
Lucy. 'O, why was not I at home? Is it too late to trace her and
proclaim her innocence!'

'I was wishing for your help. I went to Mr. Charteris to ask who the
performers were, but he knew nothing about them, and said you and his
sister had managed it all.'

'The director was Derval. He is fairly respectable, at least I know
nothing to the contrary. I'll make Charlie write. There was an Italian,
with a black beard and a bass voice, whom we have had several times. I
saw him looking at her. Just tell me what sort of woman is the mother.
She lets lodgings, does not she?'

'Yes, in Little Whittington-street.'

'Dear me! I trust she is no friend of Honor Charlecote's.'

'Out of her beat, I should think. She dissents.'

'What a blessing! I beg your pardon, but if anything could be an
aggravation, it would be Honor Charlecote's moralities.'

'So you were not aware of the dissent?'

'And you are going to set that down as more deceit, as if it were the
poor thing's business to denounce her mother. Now, to show you that I
can be sure that Edna was brought up to the Church, I will tell you her
antecedents. Her father was Sir Thomas Deane's butler; they lived in the
village, and she was very much in the nursery with the Miss Deanes--had
some lessons from the governess. There was some notion of making her a
nursery governess, but Sir Thomas died, the ladies went abroad, taking
her father with them; Edna was sent to a training school, and the mother
went to live in the City with a relation who let lodgings, and who has
since died, leaving the concern to Mrs. Murrell, whose husband was killed
by an upset of the carriage on the Alps.'

'I heard all that, and plenty besides! Poor woman, she was in such
distress that one could not but let her pour it all out, but I declare
the din rang in my ears the whole night after. A very nice,
respectable-looking body she was, with jet-black eyes like diamonds, and
a rosy, countrified complexion, quite a treat to see in that grimy place,
her widow's cap as white as snow, but oh, such a tongue! She would give
me all her spiritual experiences--how she was converted by an awakening
minister in Cat-alley, and yet had a great respect for such ministers of
the Church as fed their flocks with sincere milk, mixed up with the
biography of all the shopmen and clerks who