too much of the world to be
easily shocked, in the old conventional sense. Besides, her Bleary
Street work had brought her into contact with girls who had gone to
the bad, and she had not found them different from other girls. If she
hadn't known....

She could contemplate without horror, therefore, Letty's taking
desperate steps--if indeed she hadn't taken them long ago--and yet she
herself didn't want to be involved in the proceeding. It was one thing
to view an unfortunate situation from which you stood detached, and
another to be in a certain sense the cause of it. She would not really
be the cause of it, whatever the girl did, since she, the girl, was a
free agent, and of an age to know her own mind. Moreover, the secret
of the door was one which she couldn't help finding out in any case.
She, Miss Walbrook, could dismiss these scruples; and yet there was
that uncomfortable sing-song humming through her brain: "_Noblesse
oblige! Noblesse oblige!_"

"I must get rid of it," she said to herself, as Wildgoose admitted
her. "I've got to be on the safe side. I can't have it on my mind."

Going to the telephone before she had so much as taken off her gloves
she was answered by Steptoe. "This is Miss Walbrook again, Steptoe. I
should like to speak to--to the young woman."

Steptoe who had found Letty crying after Miss Walbrook's departure
answered with resentful politeness. "I'll speak to Mrs. Allerton,
miss. She _may_ be aible to come to the telephone."

"Ye-es?" came later, in a feeble, teary voice.

"This is Miss Walbrook again. I'm sorry to trouble you the second
time."

"Oh, that doesn't matter."

"I merely wanted to say, what perhaps I should have said before I
left, that I hope you won't--won't _use_ the information I gave you as
I was leaving--at any rate not at once."

"Do you mean the door?"

"Exactly. I was afraid after I came away that you might do something
in a hurry----"

"It'll have to be in a hurry if I do it at all."

"Oh, I don't see that. In any case, I'd--I'd think it over. Perhaps we
could have another talk about it, and then----"

Something was said which sounded like a faint, "Very well," so that
Barbara put up the receiver.

Her conscience relieved she could open the dams keeping back the
fiercer tides of her anger. Rash had talked about her to this girl! He
had given her to understand that she was a fool! He had allowed it to
appear that "he didn't think much of her!" No matter