you do it yourself?"

The girl flushed uncomfortably. "You see, father quarrelled with her
about that unkind thing she did to me--oh, it isn't worth telling!--but
he wrote her an angry letter, and they never spoke afterwards. Lady
Dunstable never forgives that kind of thing. If people find fault with
her, she just drops them. I don't believe she'd read a letter from me!"

"_Les offenses_, etc.," said Doris, meditating. "But what are the facts?
Has the boy actually promised to marry her? She may have been telling
lies to my uncle."

"She tells everybody so. I saw a girl who knows her quite well. They
write for the same paper--it's a fashion paper. You saw that hat, by the
way, she had on? She gets them as perquisites from the smart shops she
writes about. She has a whole cupboard of them at home, and when she
wants money she sells them for what she can get. Well, she told me that
Madame--they all call her Madame, though they all know quite well that
she's not married, and that her name is Flink--boasts perpetually of her
engagement. It seems that he was ill in the winter--in his lodgings. His
mother knew nothing about it--he wouldn't tell her, and Madame nursed
him, and made a fuss of him. And Mr. Dunstable thought he owed her a
great deal--and she made scenes and told him she had compromised herself
by coming to nurse him--and all that kind of nonsense. And at last he
promised to marry her--in writing. And now she's so sure of him that she
just bullies him--you saw how she ordered him about to-day."

"Well, why doesn't he marry her, if he's such a fool--why hasn't he
married her long ago?" cried Doris.

Miss Wigram looked distressed.

"I don't know. My friend thinks it's his father. She believes, at least,
that he doesn't want to get married without telling Lord Dunstable; and
that, of course, means telling his mother. And he hates the thought of
the letters and the scenes. So he keeps it hanging on; and lately Madame
has been furious with him, and is always teasing and sniffing at him.
He's dreadfully weak, and my friend's afraid that before he's made up
his own mind what to do that woman will have carried him off to a
registry office--and got the horrid thing done for good and all."

There was silence a moment. After which Doris said, with a cold
decision:

"You can't imagine how absurd it seems to me that you should come and
ask me to help Lady Dunstable with her son. There is nobody in the world
less helple