"I used to know them--quite well," said the girl, quietly. "My father
had one of Lord Dunstable's livings. He died last year. He didn't like
Lady Dunstable. He quarrelled with her, because--because she once did a
very rude thing to me. But this would be _too_ awful! And poor Lord
Dunstable! Everybody likes him. Oh--it must be stopped!--it _must_!"




CHAPTER IV


When Doris reached home that evening, the little Kensington house, with
half its carpets up and all but two of its rooms under dust-sheets,
looked particularly lonely and unattractive. Arthur's study was
unrecognisable. No cheerful litter anywhere. No smell of tobacco, no
sign of a male presence! Doris, walking restlessly from room to room,
had never felt so forsaken, so dismally certain that the best of life
was done. Moreover, she had fully expected to find a letter from Arthur
waiting for her; and there was nothing.

It was positively comic that under such circumstances anybody should
expect her--Doris Meadows--to trouble her head about Lady Dunstable's
affairs. Of course she would feel it if her son made a ridiculous and
degrading marriage. But why not?--why shouldn't he come to grief like
anybody else's son? Why should heaven and earth be moved in order to
prevent it?--especially by the woman to whose possible jealousy and pain
Lady Dunstable had certainly never given the most passing thought.

All the same, the distress shown by that odd girl, Miss Wigram, and her