ch other. The girl was evidently agitated.
But she seemed not to know how to begin what she had to say.

Doris broke the silence.

"You were astonished to find that I know the Dunstables?"

"Oh, no!--I didn't think--" stammered her visitor--"I supposed some
friend of yours might be staying there."

"My husband is staying there," said Doris, quietly. Really it was too
much trouble to tell a falsehood. Her pride refused.

"Oh, I see!" cried Miss Wigram, though in fact she was more bewildered
than before. Why should this extraordinary little lady have behaved at
the studio as if she had never heard of the Dunstables, and be now
confessing that her husband was actually staying in their house?

Doris smiled--with perfect self-possession.

"Please sit down. You think it odd, of course, that I didn't tell you I
knew the Dunstables, while we were talking about them. The fact is I
didn't want to be mixed up with the affair at all. We have only lately
made acquaintance with the Dunstables. Lady Dunstable is my husband's
friend. I don't like her very much. But neither of us knows her well
enough to go and tell her tales about her son."

Miss Wigram considered--her gentle, troubled eyes bent upon Doris. "Of
course--I know--how many people dislike Lady Dunstable. She did
a--rather cruel thing to me once. The thought of it humiliated and
discouraged me for a long time. It made me almost glad to leave home.
And of course she hasn't won Mr. Herbert's confidence at all. She has
always snubbed and disapproved of him. Oh, I knew him very little. I
have hardly ever spoken to him. You saw he didn't recognise me this
afternoon. But my father used to go over to Crosby Ledgers to coach him
in the holidays, and he often told me that as a boy he was _terrified_
of his mother. She either took no notice of him at all, or she was
always sneering at him, and scolding him. As soon as ever he came of age
and got a little money of his own, he declared he wouldn't live at home.
His father wanted him to go into Parliament or the army, but he said he
hated the army, and if he was such a dolt as his mother thought him it
would be ridiculous to attempt politics. And so he just drifted up to
town and looked out for people that would make much of him, and wouldn't
snub him. And that, of course, was how he got into the toils of a woman
like that!"

The girl threw up her hands tragically.

Doris sat up, with energy.

"But what on earth," she said,