them. She was to go to lunch next day--he thought he could safely
undertake not to poison her with bad cooking or unsound wine. He lived
in chambers in Parliament Place. This engagement booked, she asked him
for his mother's address.

Mary lived in a small street in Richmond.

"Such a slum!" said Bob disgustedly. "But she would do it, in spite of
all that I could say. And rushed there, too, when he had hardly been
dead a week. It was not decent, as I told her, to be
advertising the sale two days after the funeral. But she is a peculiar
woman."

"She is a Pennycuick," said Mrs Dalzell reprovingly. "She would not
care to go on living in a house that she had ceased to have the right
to live in. I should not myself."

"But she might have gone to another place."

"You must insist on her going to another."

"I am afraid my influence is not enough to persuade her."

"My dear boy, I am convinced that if you asked her to walk into a
burning fiery furnace, she would do it to please you, without a
moment's hesitation."

"She is that way in some things, poor dear; but in others--I may talk
till I have no voice left, and she won't listen. And she was set on
this scheme. She has a mania for--for that sort of thing. One would