lass, with a fore-arm
about as shapely as the hind leg of an elephant, and a most unpleasing
habit of snorting audibly as she moved, shuffled in with the tea-tray.
In her wake came the slim Elizabeth, to whom Lady Honoria was
introduced.

After this, conversation flagged for a while, till Lady Honoria, feeling
that things were getting a little dull, set the ball rolling again.

"What a pretty view you have of the sea from these windows," she said in
her well-trained and monotonously modulated voice. "I am so glad to have
seen it, for, you know, I am going away to-morrow."

Beatrice looked up quickly.

"My husband is not going," she went on, as though in answer to an
unspoken question. "I am playing the part of the undutiful wife and
running away from him, for exactly three weeks. It is very wicked of
me, isn't it? but I have an engagement that I must keep. It is most
tiresome."

Geoffrey, sipping his tea, smiled grimly behind the shelter of his cup.
"She does it uncommonly well," he thought to himself.

"Does your little girl go with you, Lady Honoria?" asked Elizabeth.

"Well, no, I think not. I can't bear parting with her--you know how hard
it is when one has only one child. But I think she would be so bored
where I am going to stay, for there are no other children there; and
besides, she positively adores the sea. So I shall have to leave her to
her father's tender mercies, poor dear."

"I hope Effie will survive it, I am sure," said Geoffrey laughing.

"I suppose that your husband is going to stay on at Mrs. Jones's," said
the clergyman.

"Really, I don't know. What _are_ you going to do, Geoffrey? Mrs.
Jones's rooms are rather expensive for people in our impoverished
condition. Besides, I am sure that she cannot look after Effie. Just
think, she has eight children of her own, poor old dear. And I must take
Anne with me; she is Effie's French nurse, you know, a perfect treasure.
I am going to stay in a big house, and my experience of those big houses
is, that one never gets waited on at all unless one takes a maid. You
see, what is everybody's business is nobody's business. I'm sure I don't
know how you will get on with the child, Geoffrey; she takes such a lot
of looking after."

"Oh, don't trouble about that, Honoria," he answered. "I daresay that
Effie and I will manage somehow."

Here one of those peculiar gleams of intelligence which marked the
advent of a new idea passed across Elizabeth's face.