“Oh, you don’t know,” he said.  “I know they fancy I have done something romantic, heroic and all that kind of thing, and they are curious to see you.”

“They cannot hurt me by looking at me,” said Sheila simply.  “And they will soon find out how little there is to discover.”

The house being in Holland Park they had not far to go; and just as they were driving up to the door a young man, slight, sandy-haired and stooping, got out of a hansom and crossed the pavement.

“By Jove!” said Lavender, “there is Redburn, I did not know he knew Mrs. Lorraine and her mother.  That is Lord Arthur Redburn, Sheila:  mind, if you should talk to him, not to call him ‘my lord.’”

Sheila laughed and said, “How am I to remember all these things?”

They got into the house, and by and by Lavender found himself, with Sheila on his arm, entering a drawing-room to present her to certain of his friends.  It was a large room, with a great deal of gilding and color about it, and with a conservatory at the farther end; but the blaze of light had not so bewildering an effect on Sheila’s eyes as the appearance of two ladies to whom she was now introduced.  She had heard much about them.  She was curious to see them.  Many a time had she thought over the strange story Lavender had told her of the woman who heard that her husband was dying in a hospital during the war, and started off, herself and her daughter, to find him out; how there was in the same hospital another dying man whom they had known some years before, and who had gone away because the girl would not listen to him; how this man, being very near to death, begged that the girl would do him the last favor he would ask of her, of wearing his name and inheriting his property; and how, some few hours after the strange and sad ceremony had been performed, he breathed his last, happy in holding her hand.  The father died next day, and the two widows were thrown upon the world, almost without friends, but not without means.  This man Lorraine had been possessed of considerable wealth, and the girl who had suddenly become mistress of it found herself able to employ all possible means in assuaging her mother’s grief.  They began to travel.  The two women went from capital to capital, until at last they came to London; and here, having gathered around them a considerable number of friends, they proposed to take up their residence permanently.  Lavender had often talked to Sheila about Mrs. Lorraine—­about her shrewdness, her sharp sayings, and the odd contrast between this clever, keen, frank woman of the world and the woman one would have expected to be the heroine of a pathetic tale.