lie" and Harry
Clavering in early days; and never mentioned Lord Ongar without some
term of violent abuse.

"Horrid wretch!" she said, pausing over all the r's in the name she had
called him. "It began, you know, from the very first. Of course he had
been a fool. An old roue is always a fool to marry. What does he get,
you know, for his money? A pretty face. He's tired of that as soon as
it's his own. Is it not so, Mr. Clavering? But other people ain't tired
of it, and then he becomes jealous. But Lord Ongar was not jealous. He
was not man enough to be jealous. Hor-r-rid wr-retch!" She then went on
telling many things which, as he listened, almost made Harry Clavering's
hair stand on end, and which must not be repeated here. She herself had
met her brother in Paris, and had been with him when they encountered
the Ongars in that capital. According to her showing, they had, all of
them, been together nearly from that time to the day of Lord Ongar's
'death. But Harry soon learned to feel that he could not believe all
that the little lady told him.

"Edouard was always with him. Poor Edouard!" she said. "There was some
money matter between them about ecarte. When that wr-retch got to be so
bad, he did not like parting with his money--not even when he had lost
it! And Julie had been so good always! Julie and Edouard had done
everything for the nasty wr-retch." Harry did not at all like this
mingling of the name of Julie and Edouard, though it did not for a
moment fill his mind with any suspicion as to Lady Ongar. It made him
feel, however, that this woman was dangerous, and that her tongue might
be very mischievous if she talked to others as she did to him. As he
looked at her--and being now in her own room she was not dressed with
scrupulous care--and as he listened to her, he could not conceive what
Lady Ongar had seen in her that she should have made a friend of her.
Her brother, the count, was undoubtedly a gentleman in his manners and
way of life, but he did not know by what name to call this woman, who
called Lady Ongar Julie. She was altogether unlike any ladies whom he
had known.

"You know that Julie will be in town next week?"

"No; I did not know when she was to return."

"Oh, yes; she has business with those people in South Audley Street on
Thursday. Poor dear! Those lawyers are so harassing! But when people
have seven--thousand--pounds a year, they must put up with lawyers." As
she pronounced those talisma