Mrs. Lovell gazed at Algernon for one long meditative moment.

“Impossible,” she exclaimed.  “Edward has more brains than heart.”  And now the lady’s face was scarlet.  “How did this Rhoda, with her absurd name, think of meeting you to tell you such stuff?  Indeed, there’s a simplicity in some of these young women—­” She said the remainder to herself.

“She’s really very innocent and good,” Algernon defended Rhoda. “she is.  There isn’t a particle of nonsense in her.  I first met her in town, as I stated, at the Bank; just on the steps, and we remembered I had called a cab for her a little before; and I met her again by accident yesterday.”

“You are only a boy in their hands, my cousin Algy!” said Mrs. Lovell.

Algernon nodded with a self-defensive knowingness.  “I fancy there’s no doubt her sister has written to her that she’s married.  It’s certain she has.  She’s a blunt sort of girl; not one to lie, not even for a sister or a lover, unless she had previously made up her mind to it.  In that case, she wouldn’t stick at much.”

“But, do you know,” said Mrs. Lovell—­“do you know that Edward’s father would be worse than yours over such an act of folly?  He would call it an offence against common sense, and have no mercy for it.  He would be vindictive on principle.  This story of yours cannot be true.  Nothing reconciles it.”

“Oh, Sir Billy will be rusty; that stands to reason,” Algernon assented.  “It mayn’t be true.  I hope it isn’t.  But Ned has a madness for fair women.  He’d do anything on earth for them.  He loses his head entirely.”

“That he may have been imprudent—­” Mrs. Lovell thus blushingly hinted at the lesser sin of his deceiving and ruining the girl.

“Oh, it needn’t be true,” said Algernon; and with meaning, “Who’s to blame if it is?”

Mrs. Lovell again reddened.  She touched Algernon’s fingers.

“His friends mustn’t forsake him, in any case.”

“By Jove! you are the right sort of woman,” cried Algernon.

It was beyond his faculties to divine that her not forsaking of Edward might haply come to mean something disastrous to him.  The touch of Mrs. Lovell’s hand made him forget Rhoda in a twinkling.  He detained it, audaciously, even until she frowned with petulance and stamped her foot.

There was over her bosom a large cameo-brooch, representing a tomb under a palm-tree, and the figure of a veiled woman with her head bowed upon the tomb.  This brooch was falling, when Algernon caught it.  The pin tore his finger, and in the energy of pain he dashed the brooch to her feet, with immediate outcries of violent disgust at himself and exclamations for pardon.  He picked up the brooch.  It was open.  A strange, discoloured, folded substance lay on the floor of the carriage.  Mrs. Lovell gazed down at it, and then at him, ghastly pale.  He lifted it by one corner, and the diminutive folded squares came out, revealing a strip of red-stained handkerchief.