he had fifty loves. Perhaps he has."

Daphne Wing uttered a little gasp; then her teeth came down rather
viciously on her lower lip.

"I mean him to do what I want now, not what he wants me. That's the only
way when you love. Oh, don't smile like that, please; you do make me
feel so--uncertain."

"When are you going to see him next?"

Daphne Wing grew very pink.

"I don't know. He might be coming in to lunch. You see, it's not as if
he were a stranger, is it?" Casting up her eyes a little, she added: "He
won't even let me speak your name; it makes him mad. That's why I'm
sure he still loves you; only, his love is so funny." And, seizing Gyp's
hand: "I shall never forget how good you were to me. I do hope you--you
love somebody else." Gyp pressed those damp, clinging fingers, and
Daphne Wing hurried on: "I'm sure your baby's a darling. How you must
be suffering! You look quite pale. But it isn't any good suffering. I
learned that."

Her eyes lighted on the table, and a faint ruefulness came into them, as
if she were going to ask Gyp to eat the oysters.

Gyp bent forward and put her lips to the girl's forehead.

"Good-bye. My baby would thank you if she knew."

And she turned to go. She heard a sob. Daphne Wing was crying; then,
before Gyp could speak, she struck herself on the throat, and said, in a
strangled voice:

"Tha--that's idiotic! I--I haven't cried since--since, you know. I--I'm
perfect mistress of myself; only, I--only--I suppose you reminded me--I
NEVER cry!"

Those words and the sound of a hiccough accompanied Gyp down the alley
to her cab.

When she got back to Bury Street, she found Betty sitting in the hall
with her bonnet on. She had not been sent for, nor had any reply come
from Newmarket. Gyp could not eat, could settle to nothing. She went
up to her bedroom to get away from the servants' eyes, and went on
mechanically with a frock of little Gyp's she had begun on the fatal
morning Fiorsen had come back. Every other minute she stopped to listen
to sounds that never meant anything, went a hundred times to the window
to look at nothing. Betty, too, had come upstairs, and was in the
nursery opposite; Gyp could hear her moving about restlessly among her
household gods. Presently, those sounds ceased, and, peering into the
room, she saw the stout woman still in her bonnet, sitting on a trunk,
with her back turned, uttering heavy sighs. Gyp stole back into her own
room with a sick, trembling s