’I won’t open my lips.  But you’re quite sure she’s as old as you say?’

‘Old enough to be my mother, I assure you.’

The girl’s suspicions were not wholly set at rest, but she made no further display of them.

‘Now just think what an advantage it might be to you, to know her,’ Horace pursued.  ’She’d introduce you at once to fashionable society, really tip-top people.  How would you like that?’

‘Not bad,’ was the judicial reply.

’She must have no end of money, and who knows what she might do for me!’

‘It’s a jolly queer thing,’ mused the maiden.

‘There’s no denying that.  We must keep it close, whatever we do.’

‘You haven’t told anybody else?’

‘Not a soul!’ Horace lied stoutly.

They were surprised by the sudden opening of the door; a servant appeared to clear the table.  Fanny reprimanded her for neglecting to knock.

’We may as well go into the drawing-room.  There’s nobody particular.  Only Mrs. Middlemist, and Mr. Crewe, and—­’

In the hall they encountered Crewe himself, who stood there conversing with Beatrice.  A few words were exchanged by the two men, and Horace followed his enchantress into the drawing-room, where he found, seated in conversation with Mrs. Peachey, two persons whom he had occasionally met here.  One of them, Mrs. Middlemist, was a stout, coarse, high-coloured woman, with fingers much bejewelled.  Until a year or two ago she had adorned the private bar of a public-house kept by her husband; retired from this honourable post, she now devoted herself to society and the domestic virtues.  The other guest, Mrs. Murch by name, proclaimed herself, at a glance, of less prosperous condition, though no less sumptuously arrayed.  Her face had a hungry, spiteful, leering expression; she spoke in a shrill, peevish tone, and wriggled nervously on her chair.  In eleven years of married life, Mrs. Murch had borne six children, all of whom died before they were six months old.  She lived apart from her husband, who had something to do with the manufacture of an Infants’ Food.

Fanny was requested to sing.  She sat down at the piano, rattled a prelude, and gave forth an echo of the music-halls: 

’It’s all up with poor Tommy now. 
I shall never more be happy, I vow. 
It’s just a week to-day
Since my Sairey went away,
And it’s all up with poor Tommy now.’

Mrs. Middlemist, who prided herself upon serious vocal powers, remarked that comic singing should be confined to men.

’You haven’t a bad voice, my dear, if you would only take pains with it.  Now sing us “For Ever and for Ever."’

This song being the speaker’s peculiar glory, she was of course requested to sing it herself, and, after entreaty, consented.  Her eyes turned upward, her fat figure rolling from side to side, her mouth very wide open, Mrs. Middlemist did full justice to the erotic passion of this great lyric: