iss Baker to take her chance of promotion
unmolested.

Miss Baker gave a long sigh. Now that Miss Gauntlet was gone she felt
herself better able to speak; but, nevertheless, any speech on the
subject was difficult to her. Her kind heart at once forgave Miss
Todd. There could now be no marriage between that false one and her
friend; and therefore, if the ice would only get itself broken, she
would not be unwilling to converse upon the subject. But how to break
the ice!

"I always thought he would," at last she said.

"Did you?" said Miss Todd. "Well, he certainly used to come there,
but I never knew why. Sometimes I thought it was to talk about you."

"Oh, no!" said Miss Baker, plaintively.

"I gave him no encouragement--none whatever;--used to send him here
and there--anything to get rid of him. Sometimes I thought--" and
then Miss Todd hesitated.

"Thought what?" asked Miss Baker.

"Well, I don't want to be ill-natured; but sometimes I thought that
he wanted to borrow money, and didn't exactly know how to begin."

"To borrow money!" He had once borrowed money from Miss Baker.

"Well, I don't know; I only say I thought so. He never did."

Miss Baker sighed again, and then there was a slight pause in the
conversation.

"But, Miss Todd--"

"Well, my dear!"

"Do you think that--"

"Think what? Speak out, my dear; you may before me. If you've got any
secret, I'll keep it."

"Oh! I've got no secret; only this. Do you think that Sir Lionel
is--is poor--that he should want to borrow money?"

"Well; poor! I hardly know what you call poor. But we all know that
he is a distressed man. I suppose he has a good income, and a little
ready money would, perhaps, set him up; but there's no doubt about
his being over head and ears in debt, I suppose."

This seemed to throw a new and unexpected light on Miss Baker's mind.
"I thought he was always so very respectable," said she.

"Hum-m-m!" said Miss Todd, who knew the world.

"Eh?" said Miss Baker, who did not.

"It depends on what one means by respectable," said Miss Todd.

"I really thought he was so very--"

"Hum-m-m-m," repeated Miss Todd, shaking her head.

And then there was a little conversation carried on between these
ladies so entirely _sotto voce_ that the reporter of this scene was
unable to hear a word of it. But this he could see, that Miss Todd
bore by far the greater part in it.

At the end of it, Miss Baker gave another, and a longer, and a