“Good Heavens!—­and why not?” the woman exclaimed, suddenly sitting up.

“I believe that he only asked you because he has an idea that you can tell him—­something he wants to know about Mr. Mannering,” the girl answered, steadily.  “I don’t think that you ought to go!”

“Rubbish!” her mother answered, crossly.  “I don’t believe that he has such an idea in his head.  As though he couldn’t ask me for the sake of my company.  And if he does ask me questions, I’m not obliged to answer them, am I?  Do you think that I’m to be turned inside out like a schoolgirl?”

“Sir Leslie is very clever, and he is very unscrupulous,” the girl answered.  “I wish you weren’t going!  I believe that he wants to find out things.”

Mrs. Phillimore frowned uneasily.

“I’m not a fool!” she said.  “He’s welcome to all he can get to know through me.  I don’t know what you want to try to make me uncomfortable for, Hester, I’m sure.  Sir Leslie has never betrayed the least curiosity about Mr. Mannering, and I don’t believe that he’s any such idea in his head.  Upon my word I don’t see why you should think it impossible that Sir Leslie should come here just for the sake of improving an acquaintance which he found pleasant.  That’s what he gave me to understand, and he put it very nicely too!”

“I do not think that Sir Leslie is that sort of man, mother.”

“And I don’t see how you know anything about it,” was the sharp response.  “Ring the bell, please.  I want to speak to Mary about my skirt.”

“You mean to dine with him then, mother?” she asked, crossing the room towards the bell.

“Of course!  I’ve accepted.  To-night and as often as he chooses to ask me.  Now don’t upset me, please.  I want to look my best to-night, and if I get angry my hair goes all out of curl.”

The girl went back to her typewriter.  She unfolded a sheet of copy, and placed it on the stand before her.

“If you have made up your mind, mother, I suppose you will go,” she said.  “Still—­I wish you wouldn’t.”

Mrs. Phillimore shrugged her shoulders.

“If I did what you wished all the time,” she remarked, pettishly, “I might as well drown myself at once.  Can’t you understand, Hester?” she added, with a sudden change of manner, “that I must do something to help me to forget?  You don’t want to see me go mad, do you?”

The girl turned half round in her chair.  She was fronting a mirror.  She caught a momentary impression of herself—­pallid, hollow-eyed, weary.  She sighed.

“There are other ways of forgetting,” she murmured.  “There is work.”

Her mother laughed scornfully.

“You have chosen your way,” she said, “let me choose mine.  Turn round, Hester.”