the servant to open the
door when the lady upstairs came down. After a very short pause, the
lady upstairs did come down, and walked out to her carriage with an
unabashed demeanour.

After much consideration Lady George determined that she must tell her
husband what had occurred. She was aware that she had been very
uncourteous, and was not sure whether in her anger she had not been
carried further than became her. Nothing could, she thought, shake her
in her determination to have no further friendly intercourse of any
kind with the woman. Not even were her husband to ask her would that be
possible. Such a request from him would be almost an insult to her. And
no request from anyone else could have any strength, as no one else
knew the circumstances of the case. It was not likely that he would
have spoken of it,--and of her own silence she was quite sure. But how
had it come to pass that the woman had had the face to come to her?
Could it be that Lord George had instigated her to do so? She never
made enquiries of her husband as to where he went and whom he saw. For
aught that she knew, he might be in Berkeley Square every day. Then she
called to mind Mrs. Houghton's face, with the paint visible on it in
the broad day, and her blackened eyebrows, and her great crested helmet
of false hair nearly eighteen inches deep, and her affected voice and
false manner,--and then she told herself that it was impossible that
her husband should like such a creature.

"George," she said to him abruptly, as soon as he came home, "who do
you think has been here? Mrs. Houghton has been here." Then came that
old frown across his brow; but she did not know at first whether it was
occasioned by anger against herself or against Mrs. Houghton. "Don't
you think it was very unfortunate?"

"What did she say?"

"She wanted to be friends with me."

"And what did you say?"

"I was very rude to her. I told her that I would never have anything to
do with her; and then I left the room, so that she had to get out of
the house as she could. Was I not right? You don't want me to know her,
do you?"

"Certainly not."

"And I was right."

"Quite right. She must be a very hardened woman."

"Oh George, dear George! You have made me so happy!" Then she jumped up
and threw her arms round him. "I never doubted you for a moment--never,
never; but I was afraid you might have thought----. I don't know what I
was afraid of, but I was a fool. She is a n