This is not the first young man she’s fleeced—­by a long way.  There was a man—­younger than Mr. Dunstable, a boy of nineteen—­three years ago.  She got him to promise to marry her; and the parents came down, and paid her enormously to let him go.  Now she’s got through all that money, and she boasts she’s going to marry young Dunstable before his parents know anything about it.  She’s going to make sure of a peerage this time.  Oh, she’s odious!  She’s greedy, she’s vulgar, she’s false!  And of course”—­the girl’s eyes grew wide and scared—­“there may be other things much worse.  How do we know?”

“How do we know indeed!” said Doris, with a shrug.  “Well!”—­she turned her eyes full upon her guest—­“and what are you going to do?”

An eager look met hers.

“Couldn’t you—­couldn’t you write to Mr. Meadows, and ask him to warn Lady Dunstable?”

Doris shook her head.

“Why don’t you do it yourself?”

The girl flushed uncomfortably.  “You see, father quarrelled with her about that unkind thing she did to me—­oh, it isn’t worth telling!—­but he wrote her an angry letter, and they never spoke afterwards.  Lady Dunstable never forgives that kind of thing.  If people find fault with her, she just drops them.  I don’t believe she’d read a letter from me!”

“Les offenses, etc.,” said Doris, meditating.  “But what are the facts?  Has the boy actually promised to marry her?  She may have been telling lies to my uncle.”

“She tells everybody so.  I saw a girl who knows her quite well.  They write for the same paper—­it’s a fashion paper.  You saw that hat, by the way, she had on?  She gets them as perquisites from the smart shops she writes about.  She has a whole cupboard of them at home, and when she wants money she sells them for what she can get.  Well, she told me that Madame—­they all call her Madame, though they all know quite well that she’s not married, and that her name is Flink—­boasts perpetually of her engagement.  It seems that he was ill in the winter—­in his lodgings.  His mother knew nothing about it—­he wouldn’t tell her, and Madame nursed him, and made a fuss of him.  And Mr. Dunstable thought he owed her a great deal—­and she made scenes and told him she had compromised herself by coming to nurse him—­and all that kind of nonsense.  And at last he promised to marry her—­in writing.  And now she’s so sure of him that she just bullies him—­you saw how she ordered him about to-day.”

“Well, why doesn’t he marry her, if he’s such a fool—­why hasn’t he married her long ago?” cried Doris.

Miss Wigram looked distressed.

“I don’t know.  My friend thinks it’s his father.  She believes, at least, that he doesn’t want to get married without telling Lord Dunstable; and that, of course, means telling his mother.  And he hates the thought of the letters and the scenes.  So he keeps it hanging on; and lately Madame has been furious with him, and is always teasing and sniffing at him.  He’s dreadfully weak, and my friend’s afraid that before he’s made up his own mind what to do that woman will have carried him off to a registry office—­and got the horrid thing done for good and all.”