‘Oh! do tell me—­how is Mrs. Morrison?’ cried Phoebe, stepping forward, her whole aspect quivering with painful pity.

‘She’s all right,’ said Bella, looking away.  ’We’re going to live in Guernsey.  We’re selling this house.  It’s hers, of course.  Papa settled it on her, years before—­’

She stopped—­then drew herself together.

’So, you see, I got that picture out of mother.  I’ve never forgiven Mr. Fenwick for taking it home, saying he’d improve it, and then sending it back as bad as ever.  I knew he’d done that to spite me—­he’d disliked me from the first.’

‘John never painted a portrait to spite anybody in his life,’ cried Phoebe.  ‘I never heard such nonsense.’

‘Well, anyway, he can take it back,’ said the girl.  ’Mother wouldn’t let me destroy it, but she said I might give it back; so there it is.  We kept the frame—­that’s decent—­that might do for something else.’

Phoebe’s eyes flashed.

’Thank you, Miss Morrison.  It would, indeed, be a great pity to waste my husband’s work on some one who couldn’t appreciate it.’  She took the roll and stood with her hand upon it, protecting it.  ’I’ll tell him what you’ve done.’

‘Oh, then, you do know where he is!’ said Bella, with a laugh.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I say.’  The eyes of the two women met across the table.  A flash of cruelty showed itself in those of the girl.  ’I thought, perhaps, you mightn’t—­as he’s been passing in London for an unmarried man.’

There was a pause—­a moment’s dead silence.

‘That, of course, is a lie!’ said Phoebe at last, drawing in her breath—­and then, restraining herself, ‘or else a silly mistake.’

‘It’s no mistake at all,’ said Bella, with a toss of the head.  ’I thought you ought to know, and mother agreed with me.  The men are all alike.  There’s a letter I got the other day from a friend of mine.’

She drew a letter from a stringbag on her wrist, and handed it to Phoebe.

Phoebe made no motion to take it.  She stood rigid, her fierce, still look fixed on her visitor.

‘You’d better,’ said Bella; ’I declare you’d better.  If my husband had been behaving like this, I should want to know the truth—­and pay him out.’

Phoebe took the letter, opened it with steady fingers, and read it.  While she was reading it the baby Carrie, escaped from the little servant’s tutelage, ran in and hid her face in her mother’s skirts, peering sometimes at the stranger.

When she had finished the letter, Phoebe handed it back to its owner.

‘Who wrote that?’

’A friend of mine who’s working at South Kensington.  You can see—­she knows a lot about artists.’

‘And what she doesn’t know she makes up,’ said Phoebe, with slow contempt.  ’You tell her, Miss Morrison, from me, she might be better employed than writing nasty, lying gossip about people she never saw.’