woman opposite, who was now
following her every word--but like one seized against her will.

"Do you remember a Miss Wigram, Lady Dunstable--whose father had a
living near Crosby Ledgers?"

Lady Dunstable moved involuntarily--her eyelids flickered a little.

"Certainly. Why do you ask?"

"_She_ saw Mr. Dunstable--and Miss Flink--in my uncle's studio, and she
was so distressed to think what--what Lord Dunstable"--there was a
perceptible pause before the name--"would feel, if his son married her,
that she determined to find out the truth about her. She told me she had
one or two clues, and I sent her to a cousin of mine--a very clever
solicitor--to be advised. That was yesterday morning. Then I got my
uncle to find out your son--and bring him to me yesterday afternoon
before I started. He came to our house in Kensington, and I told him I
had come across some very doubtful stories about Miss Flink. He was very
unwilling to hear anything. After all, he said, he was not going to live
with her. And she had nursed him--"

"Nursed him!" said Lady Dunstable, quickly. She had risen, and was
leaning against the mantelpiece, looking sharply down upon her visitor.

"That was the beginning of it all. He was ill in the winter--in his
lodgings."

"I never heard of it!" For the first time, there was a touch of
something natural and passionate in the voice.

Doris looked a little embarrassed.

"Your son told me it was pneumonia."

"I never heard a word of it! And this--this creature nursed him?" The
tone of the robbed lioness at last!--singularly inappropriate under all
the circumstances. Doris struggled on.

"An actor friend of your son brought her to see him. And she really
devoted herself to him. He declared to me he owed her a great deal--"

"He need have owed her nothing," said Lady Dunstable, sternly. "He had
only to send a postcard--a wire--to his own people."

"He thought--you were so busy," said Doris, dropping her eyes to the
carpet.

A sound of contemptuous anger showed that her shaft--her mild shaft--had
gone home. She hurried on--"But at last I got him to promise me to wait
a week. That was yesterday at five o'clock. He wouldn't promise me to
write to you--or his father. He seemed so desperately anxious to settle
it all--in his own way. But I said a good deal about your name--and the
family--and the horrible pain he would be giving--any way. Was it
kind--was it right towards you, not only to give you _no_ op