She sighed a little.  “Yes—­I know.”  Then her eyelids flickered in a parody of Kathleen’s glance that Billy noted with a queer tenderness.  “Come and talk to me, Billy,” she commanded.  “I’m an early bird this morning, and entitled to the very biggest and best-looking worm I can find.  You’re only a worm, you know—­we’re all worms.  Mr. Jukesbury told me so last night, making an exception in my favour, for it appears I’m an angel.  He was amorously inclined last night, the tipsy old fraud!  It’s shameless, Billy, the amount of money he gets out of Miss Hugonin—­for the deserving poor.  Do you know, I rather fancy he classes himself under that head?  And I grant you he’s poor enough—­but deserving!” Mrs. Saumarez snapped her fingers eloquently.

“Eh?  Shark, eh?” queried Mr. Woods, in some discomfort.

She nodded.  “He is as bad as Sarah Haggage,” she informed him, “and everybody knows what a bloodsucker she is.  The Haggage is a disease, Billy, that all rich women are exposed to—­’more easily caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad.’  Depend upon it, Billy, those two will have every penny they can get out of your uncle’s money.”

“Peggy’s so generous,” he pleaded.  “She wants to make everybody happy—­bring about a general millenium, you know.”

“She pays dearly enough for her fancies,” said Mrs. Saumarez, in a hard voice.  Then, after a little, she cried, suddenly:  “Oh, Billy, Billy, it shames me to think of how we lie to her, and toady to her, and lead her on from one mad scheme to another!—­all for the sake of the money we can pilfer incidentally!  We’re all arrant hypocrites, you know; I’m no better than the others, Billy—­not a bit better.  But my husband left me so poor, and I had always been accustomed to the pretty things of life, and I couldn’t—­I couldn’t give them up, Billy.  I love them too dearly.  So I lie, and toady, and write drivelling talks about things I don’t understand, for drivelling women to listen to, and I still have the creature comforts of life.  I pawn my self-respect for them—­that’s all.  Such a little price to pay, isn’t it, Billy?”

She spoke in a sort of frenzy.  I dare say that at the outset she wanted Mr. Woods to know the worst of her, knowing he could not fail to discover it in time.  Billy brought memories with him, you see; and this shrewd, hard woman wanted, somehow, more than anything else in the world, that he should think well of her.  So she babbled out the whole pitiful story, waiting in a kind of terror to see contempt and disgust awaken in his eyes.

But he merely said “I see—­I see,” very slowly, and his eyes were kindly.  He couldn’t be angry with her, somehow; that pink-cheeked, crinkly haired girl stood between them and shielded her.  He was only very, very sorry.

“And Kennaston?” he asked, after a little.

Mrs. Saumarez flushed.  “Mr. Kennaston is a man of great genius,” she said, quickly.  “Of course, Miss Hugonin is glad to assist him in publishing his books—­it’s an honour to her that he permits it.  They have to be published privately, you know, as the general public isn’t capable of appreciating such dainty little masterpieces.  Oh, don’t make any mistake, Billy—­Mr. Kennaston is a very wonderful and very admirable man.”