"I've had to get things for him-papers and so on, and send them on when
he was away, and even when he was at home I've had to act for him; and so
even when it was locked I had to know where the key was. He asked me to
help him that way."

Mona noted the stress laid upon the word home, and for the first time she
had a suspicion that this girl knew more than even the Logan Trial had
disclosed, and that she was being satirical and suggestive.

"Oh, of course," she returned cheerfully in response to Kitty--"you acted
as a kind of clerk for him!" There was a note in her voice which she
might better not have used. If she but knew it, she needed this girl's
friendship very badly. She ought to have remembered that she would not
have been here in her husband's room had it not been for the letter Kitty
had written--a letter which had made her heart beat so fast when she
received it, that she had sunk helpless to the floor on one of those soft
rugs, representing the soft comfort which wealth can bring.

The reply was like a slap in the face.

"I acted for him in any way at all that he wished me to," Kitty answered,
with quiet boldness and shining, defiant face.

Mona's hand fell away from the green baize desk, and her eyes again lost
their sight for a moment. Kitty was not savage by nature. She had been
goaded as much by the thought of the letter Crozier's wife had written to
him in the hour of his ruin as by the presence of the woman in this
house, where things would never be as they had been before. She had
struck hard, and now she was immediately sorry for it: for this woman was
here in response to her own appeal; and, after all, she might well be