"You don't mean to say you have bad news?" she exclaimed,
palpitating. "You, too?"

"Why, then _you_ have something of the same kind to tell me?" said
Dyce, gazing at her anxiously.

"Tell me your's first--please do!"

"No. It's nothing very important. So say what you've got to say, and
be quick about it--come!"

Mrs. Woolstan's bosom rose and fell rapidly as she collected her
thoughts. Unconventional as were the terms in which Lashmar
addressed her, they carried no suggestion of an intimacy which
passed the limits of friendship. When his eyes turned to her, their
look was unemotional, purely speculative, and in general spoke
without looking at her at all.

"It's something about Mr. Wrybolt," Iris began, with a face of
distress. "You know he is my trustee--I told you, didn't I? I see
him very seldom, and we don't take much interest in each other; he's
nothing but a man of business, the kind I detest; he can't talk of
anything but money and shares and wretched things of that sort. But
you know him you understand."

The name of Wrybolt set before Dyce's mind a middle-aged man,
red-necked, heavy of eyelid, with a rather punctilious hearing and
authoritative mode of speech. They had met only once, here at Mrs.
Woolstan's house.