this girl has never seen her."

"How dreadful!"

"Yes. Good-night, Rose; do get to bed quickly,--a wise remark when it is
I who have been keeping you up!"

Lady Groombridge, when she got to her own room, murmured to herself:

"I only stopped just in time. I nearly said Florence, and that is where
the other wicked woman lives. It's odd they should both live in
Florence. But--how absurd, I'm half asleep--it would be much odder if
there were not two wicked women in Florence."


Sir Edmund was aware as soon as he took his seat by Molly at the
breakfast-table that she knew why Lady Groombridge was pouring out tea
with a dark countenance. He put a plate of omelette in his own place,
and then asked if Molly needed anything. As she answered in the negative
he murmured as he sat down:

"Mrs. Delaport Green is not down?"

"She has a furious toothache."

Molly's look answered his.

"I suppose there is no such thing as a dentist left in London on Easter
Monday?"