Hester consulted the letter with a manner denoting but languid interest.

“It’s rather like her that she doesn’t go to the length of explaining,” was her reply.  “She has a way of telling you a great many things you don’t care to know, and forgetting to mention those you are interested in.  She is very detailed about her health, and her affection and mine.  She evidently expects us to go back to The Kennel Farm, and deplores her inhospitality, with adjectives.”

She did not look as if she was playing a part; but she was playing one, and doing it well.  Her little way was that of a nasty-tempered, self-centred woman, made spiteful by being called upon to leave a place which suited her.

“You are not really any fonder of her than I am,” commented Osborn, after regarding her speculatively a few moments.  If he had been as sure of her as he had been of Ameerah—!

“I don’t know of any reason for my being particularly fond of her,” she said.  “It’s easy enough for a rich woman to be good-natured.  It doesn’t cost her enough to constitute a claim.”

Osborn helped himself to a stiff whiskey and soda.  They went back to The Kennel Farm the next day, and though it was his habit to consume a large number of “pegs” daily, the habit increased until there were not many hours in the day when he was normally sure of what he was doing.

The German baths to which Lady Walderhurst had gone were nearer to Palstrey than any one knew.  They were only at a few hours’ distance by rail.

When, after a day spent in a quiet London lodging, Mrs. Cupp returned to her mistress with the information that she had been to the house in Mortimer Street and found that the widow who had bought the lease and furniture was worn out with ill-luck and the uncertainty of lodgers, and only longed for release which was not ruin, Emily cried a little for joy.

“Oh, how I should like to be there!” she said.  “It was such a dear house.  No one would ever dream of my being in it.  And I need have no one but you and Jane.  I should be so safe and quiet.  Tell her you have a friend who will take it, as it is, for a year, and pay her anything.”

“I won’t tell her quite that, my lady,” Mrs. Cupp made sagacious answer.  “I’ll make her an offer in ready money down, and no questions asked by either of us.  People in her position sometimes gets a sudden let that pays them better than lodgers.  All classes has their troubles, and sometimes a decent house is wanted for a few months, where money can be paid.  I’ll make her an offer.”

The outcome of which was that the widowed householder walked out of her domicile the next morning with a heavier purse and a lighter mind than she had known for many months.  The same night, ingenuously oblivious of having been called upon to fill the role of a lady in genteel “trouble,” good and decorous Emily Walderhurst arrived under the cover of discreet darkness in a cab, and when she found herself in the “best bedroom,” which had once been so far beyond her means, she cried a little for joy again, because the four dull walls, the mahogany dressing-table, and ugly frilled pincushions looked so unmelodramatically normal and safe.