nced her intention of spending there?
What had been the need of that misrepresentation and why did she lie
before she was driven to it?

It was because she was false altogether and deception came out of her
with her breath; she was so depraved that it was easier to her to
fabricate than to let it alone. Laura would not have asked her to give
an account of her day, but she would ask her now. She shuddered at one
moment, as she found herself saying--even in silence--such things of her
sister, and the next she sat staring out of the front of the cab at the
stiff problem presented by Selina's turning up with the partner of her
guilt at the Soane Museum, of all places in the world. The girl shifted
this fact about in various ways, to account for it--not unconscious as
she did so that it was a pretty exercise of ingenuity for a nice girl.
Plainly, it was a rare accident: if it had been their plan to spend the
day together the Soane Museum had not been in the original programme.
They had been near it, they had been on foot and they had rushed in to
take refuge from the rain. But how did they come to be near it and above
all to be on foot? How could Selina do anything so reckless from her own
point of view as to walk about the town--even an out-of-the-way part of
it--with her suspected lover? Laura Wing felt the want of proper
knowledge to explain such anomalies. It was too little clear to her
where ladies went and how they proceeded when they consorted with
gentlemen in regard to their meetings with whom they had to lie. She
knew nothing of where Captain Crispin lived; very possibly--for she
vaguely remembered having heard Selina say of him that he was very
poor--he had chambers in that part of the town, and they were either
going to them or coming from them. If Selina had neglected to take her
way in a four-wheeler with the glasses up it was through some chance
that would not seem natural till it was explained, like that of their
having darted into a public institution. Then no doubt it would hang
together with the rest only too well. The explanation most exact would
probably be that the pair had snatched a walk together (in the course of
a day of many edifying episodes) for the 'lark' of it, and for the sake
of the walk had taken the risk, which in that part of London, so
detached from all gentility, had appeared to them small. The last thing
Selina could have expected was to meet her sister in such a strange
corner--her sis