Which really was hard upon us all, considering that so long as she
could do her work for herself, Miss Blake ignored both Mr. Craven and
his clerks.

Not a shilling of money would she ever, if she could help it, permit to
pass through our hands--not the slightest chance did she ever
voluntarily give Mr. Craven of recouping himself those costs or loans in
which her acquaintance involved her sister's former suitor.

Had he felt any inclination--which I am quite certain he never did--to
deduct Miss Helena's indebtedness, as represented by her aunt, out of
Miss Helena's income, he could not have done it. The tenant's money
usually went straight into Miss Blake's hands.

What she did with it, Heaven only knows. I know she did not buy
herself gloves!

Twirling the Colonel's letter about, I thought the position over.

"What, then," I asked, "do you wish us to do?"

Habited as I have attempted to describe, Miss Blake sat at one side of a
library-table. In, I flatter myself, a decent suit of clothes, washed,
brushed, shaved, I sat on the other. To ordinary observers, I know I
must have seemed much the best man of the two--yet Miss Blake got the
better of me.

She, that dilapidated, red-hot, crumpled-collared, fingerless-gloved
woman, looked me over from head to foot, as I conceived, though my boots
were hidden away under the table, and I declare--I swear--she put me out