“An actor friend of your son brought her to see him.  And she really devoted herself to him.  He declared to me he owed her a great deal—­”

“He need have owed her nothing,” said Lady Dunstable, sternly.  “He had only to send a postcard—­a wire—­to his own people.”

“He thought—­you were so busy,” said Doris, dropping her eyes to the carpet.

A sound of contemptuous anger showed that her shaft—­her mild shaft—­had gone home.  She hurried on—­“But at last I got him to promise me to wait a week.  That was yesterday at five o’clock.  He wouldn’t promise me to write to you—­or his father.  He seemed so desperately anxious to settle it all—­in his own way.  But I said a good deal about your name—­and the family—­and the horrible pain he would be giving—­any way.  Was it kind—­was it right towards you, not only to give you no opportunity of helping or advising him—­but also to take no steps to find out whether the woman he was going to marry was—­not only unsuitable, wholly unsuitable—­that, of course, he knows—­but a disgrace?  I argued with him that he must have some suspicion of the stories she has told him at different times, or he wouldn’t have tried to protect himself in this particular way.  He didn’t deny it; but he said she had looked after him, and been kind to him, when nobody else was, and he should feel a beast if he pressed her too hardly.”

“’When nobody else was’!” repeated Lady Dunstable, scornfully, her voice trembling with bitterness.  “Really, Mrs. Meadows, it is very difficult for me to believe that my son ever used such words!”

Doris hesitated, then she raised her eyes, and with the happy feeling of one applying the scourge, in the name of Justice, she said with careful mildness:—­

“I hope you will forgive me for telling you—­but I feel as if I oughtn’t to keep back anything—­Mr. Dunstable said to me:  ’My mother might have prevented it—­but—­she was never interested in me.’”

Another indignant exclamation from Lady Dunstable.  Doris hurried on.  “Only this is the important point!  At last I got his promise, and I got it in writing.  I have it here.”

Dead silence.  Doris opened her little handbag, took out a letter, in an open envelope, and handed it to Lady Dunstable, who at first seemed as if she were going to refuse it.  However, after a moment’s hesitation, she lifted her long-handled eyeglass and read it.  It ran as follows: 

DEAR MRS. MEADOWS,—­I do not know whether I ought to do what you ask me.  But you have asked me very kindly—­you have really been awfully good to me, in taking so much trouble.  I know I’m a stupid fool—­they always told me so at home.  But I don’t want to do anything mean, or to go back on a woman who once did me a good turn; with whom also once—­for I may as well be quite honest about it—­I thought I was in love.  However, I see there is something in what you say, and I will wait