ts
into words:

"Ah, poor Claudia! poor Meriel!" she sighed softly. "How little we
thought that they would be absent when we met again! And such tragic
fates... That beautiful Claudia! Can you remember how she sat that
night, making her naughty, audacious speeches, and looking so sweet and
bewitching all the time that one could not believe that she meant half
she said. But she _did_, or how could she have married that man?
Meriel was staying with her, at the time that she first--found out! She
persuaded her to see the specialist. Claudia _dared_ not tell her
husband. To the very last she braved it out. One would not have
expected her to have such courage! And when he did know, he went
straight away and never saw her again. She would see no one. She lived
alone with her nurses until the end. Poor Claudia! She wished for
great riches, and she got them, but--"

"Pound bitterness to her soul! Yes. That is the reward of seeking the
worthless thing," Mrs Ingram said quietly. "Claudia had a few years
given to her to taste the power of money, and a few years more to test
its helplessness. She learned many lessons, poor child, in that hidden
room. I sent for one of her nurses after she died. The woman cried
bitterly when she spoke of her. She said she had never had a patient
who was more thoughtful and considerate. I was thankful to know that
the poor child had had someone with her who really loved and
sympathised."

There was a tense silence. The pathos of Claudia's fate lay heavy upon
those who remembered her in the flush of her youthful triumph, and with
that other name, too, was the connection of tragedy.

"And Meriel! Meriel wished for happiness," Francis Manning said slowly.
"She was shipwrecked, wasn't she, when she was sailing to India with
some friends?"

"With Geoffrey Sterne and his wife," Val Lessing told him. "My sister
kept up a correspondence with her for some years, and I heard from her.
They had both been at school with Mrs Sterne. She appeared to lose her
health after the marriage, but while Meriel was paying her first visit
it was discovered that the real trouble was--drink! There's no harm
speaking of it now, for later on it became public property, but at the
time they hoped for a cure, and the great object was to let no one
suspect. She was fond of Meriel and begged her to stay on, in the place
of a hired nurse, and Meriel was a lonely creature. She told my sister
that she