nt, so he only suffered from a clammy and depressing flavour that
wouldn't hang about above a day or two. At least, Mr. Bartlett said so.

Gwen treated the idea that Mrs. Prichard should so much as talk about
returning to her quarters, with absolute derision.

"I'm going to keep you here and see you properly looked after, Mrs.
Picture, till I go to the Towers. And then I shall just take you with
me." For she had installed the name Picture as the old lady's working
designation with such decision that everyone else accepted it, though
one or two used it in inverted commas. "I always have my own way," she
added with a full, rich laugh that Lord William Bentinck might have
heard on his black pedestal in the Square below.

Aunt M'riar departed, not to be too late for her 'bus, and Gwen stayed
for a chat. She often spent half an hour with the old lady, trying
sometimes to get at more of her past history, always feeling that she
was met by reticence, never liking to press roughly for information.

The two thin old palms that had once been a beautiful young girl's
closed on the hand that was even now scarcely in its fullest glory of
life, as its owner's eyes looked down into the old eyes that had never
lost their sweetness. The old voice spoke first. "Why--oh why," it said,
"are you so kind to me? My dear!"

"Is it strange that I should be kind to you?" said Gwen, speaking
somewhat to herself. Then louder, as though she had been betrayed into a
claim to benevolence, and was ashamed:--"The kindness comes to very
little, when all's said and done. Besides, you can ..." She paused a
moment, taking in the pause a seat beside the arm-chair, without loosing
the hand she held; then made her speech complete:--"Besides, you can pay
it all back, you know!"

"I pay! How can I pay it back?"

"You can. I'm quite in earnest. You can pay me back everything I can do
for you--everything and more--by telling me.... Now, you mustn't be put
out, you know, if I tell you what it is." Gwen was rather frightened at
her own temerity.

"My dear--just fancy! Why should I want you not to know--anything I can
tell, if I can remember it to tell you? What is it?"

"How you come to be living in Sapps Court. And why you are so poor.
Because you _are_ poor."

"No, I have a pound a week still. I have been better off--yes! I have
been well off."

"But how came you to live in Sapps Court?"

"How came I?... Let me see!... I came there from Skillicks, a