. It
wasn't Mr. Cobb.'

Louise, next day, put a point-blank question.

'Didn't you say that you knew some people at West Kensington?'

'Oh, yes,' answered Emmeline, carelessly. 'The Kirby Simpsons.
They're away from home.'

'I'm sorry for that. Isn't there anyone else we could go and see, or
ask over here?'

'I think it very likely Mr. Bilton will come down in a few days.'

Louise received Mr. Bilton's name with moderate interest. But she
dropped the subject, and seemed to reconcile herself to domestic
pleasures.

It was on the evening of this day that Emmeline received a letter
which gave her much annoyance. Her sister, Mrs. Grove, wrote thus:

'How news does get about! And what ridiculous forms it takes! Here
is Mrs. Powell writing to me from Birmingham, and she says she has
heard that you have taken in the daughter of some wealthy _parvenu_,
for a consideration, to train her in the ways of decent society!
Just the kind of thing Mrs. Powell would delight in talking about--she
is so very malicious. Where she got her information I can't
imagine. She doesn't give the slightest hint. "They tell me"--I copy
her words--"that the girl is all but a savage, and does and says the
most awful things. I quite admire Mrs. Mumford's courage. I've heard
of people doing this kind of thing, and I always wondered how they
got on with their friends." Of course I have written to contradict
this rubbish. But it's very annoying, I'm sure.'

Mumford was angry. The source of these fables must be either Bilton
or Dunnill, yet he had not thought either of them the kind of men to
make mischief. Who else knew anything of the affair? Searching her
memory, Emmeline recalled a person unknown to her, a married lady,
who had dropped in at Mrs. Grove's when she and Louise were there.

'I didn't like her--a supercilious sort of person. And she talked a
great deal of her acquaintance with important people. It's far more
likely to have come from her than from either of those men. I shall
write and tell Molly so.'

They began to feel uncomfortable, and seriously thought of getting
rid of the burden so imprudently undertaken. Louise, the next day,
wanted to take Emmeline to town, and showed dissatisfaction when she
had to go unaccompanied. She stayed till late in the evening, and
came back with a gay account of her calls upon two or three old
friends--the girls of whom she had spoken to Mrs. Mumford. One of
them, Miss Featherstone, she had ta