er will never keep any job if he behaves as he did with
these last people--I had a very disagreeable letter from the lady."

Mrs. Piper, alias Madame Flora, grew darkly red.

"Piper 'ad a shock this last July," she said, moving a little farther
into the room, and so nearer to Enid Crofton. "The thing's been
a-weighing on 'is mind for a long time. It's something 'e won't exactly
explain. But it's on 'is conscience. Only yesterday 'e says to me, 'e
says, 'If I'm drinking, my dear, it's to drown care; I ought to have
spoken up very differently to what I done at the poor Colonel's inquest."

The terrible little woman again took a step or two forward, and then she
waited, as if she expected the lady to say something. But Enid, though
she opened her lips, found that she could not speak. Hardly knowing what
she was doing, she sat down again. And, after what seemed to the owner of
the attractive, candle-lit room an awful silence, Mrs. Piper went on,
speaking now in quite a different tone--easy, confidential, and with a
touch of wheedling good nature in it.

"Thanks to your late gentleman, Piper knows all about dogs, and all
'e requires, Modam, to set 'im up as a dogfancier, so to speak, is a
moderate bit o' money. As 'e says 'imself, five hundred pound would do it
easy. If I may make so bold, that's what reely brought me 'ere, Mrs.
Crofton. It do seem to us both, that, under the circumstances, you might
feel disposed to find the money?"

Enid looked down as she answered, falteringly: "I told Piper some time
ago that it was quite impossible for me to do anything of the kind."

In her fear and distress she uttered the words more loudly than she was
aware, and the woman looked round at the closed door with an apprehensive
look: "Don't speak so loud. We don't want to tell everyone our business,"
she said sharply.

Now she came quite close up to her victim, for by now Enid Crofton knew
that she was in very truth this woman's victim.

"You think it over," whispered Madame Flora. "We're not in a 'urry to a
day or two. And look here, Modam, I'll be open with you! If you'll do
that for Piper, it'll be in full discharge of anything you owe 'im--d'you
take my meaning?"

Enid Crofton got up slowly from her chair almost as an automaton might
have done. She wanted to say that she did not in the least know what Mrs.
Piper _did_ mean. But somehow her lips refused to form the words. She was
afraid even to shake her head.

"I told you