afraid of if he
were disappointed. I should indeed."

"Mamma, don't you think we had better have Nola to stay with us for a
while?" Lucy asked. "Miss Blanchet could describe him, or get a
photograph, and we could give orders that no such man was ever to be
admitted if he should call and ask to see her. Some one should always
go out with her, or she should only go in the carriage. I dread this
man; I do indeed. Miss Blanchet is quite right, and she knows more than
she says, I dare say. Such terrible things have happened, you know. I
read in a paper the other day of a young man who fell in love with a
girl--in the country it was, I think, or in Spain perhaps, or
somewhere--and she would not marry him; and he hid himself with a long
dagger, and when she was going to church he stabbed her several times."

"I don't think Mr. Augustus Sheppard would be likely to do anything of
that kind," Miss Blanchet said. "He's a very respectable man, and a
steady, grave sort of person."

"You never can tell," Lucy declared. "When those quiet men are in love
and disappointed, they are dreadful! I've read a great many things just
like that in books."

"Well, dear," Mrs. Money said, "we'll ask your papa. If he knows this
gentleman--this person--he can tell us what sort of man he is. It
doesn't seem that he is in London now."

"He may have come to-day," said Lucy.

Miss Theresa looked at her watch.

"Mamma dear, I don't think Miss Grey is coming in just yet, and it's
growing late, and I have to attend the Ladies' Committee of the Saint
Angulphus Association, at four."

"You go, mamma, with Theresa," Lucy exclaimed. "I'll wait; I must see
Nola. I begin to be alarmed. It's very odd her staying out. I think
something must really have happened. That man may have been in town,
waiting somewhere. You go. When I have seen Nola, and am satisfied that
she is safe, I can get home in the omnibus, or the underground, or the
steamboat, or somehow. I'll find my way, you may be sure."

"My dear," her mother said, "you were never in an omnibus in your
life."

"Papa goes in omnibuses, and he says he doesn't care whether other
people do or not."

"But a lady, my dear----"

"Oh, I've seen them in the streets full of women! They don't object to
ladies at all."

"But my dear young lady," Miss Blanchet pleaded, "there is not the
slightest occasion for your staying. Mr. Sheppard isn't at all that
kind of person. Minola is quite safe. She is often