e; but the stamp of truth is on what you
tell me. We have both been deceived in this man, and are, in some sort,
sisters."

"Sisters?" cried Katie. "Your sisters are the snake and the spider,
though neither of them wishes it known. I loathe you. And the Duke
loathed you, too."

"What's that?" gasped Zuleika.

"Didn't he tell you? He told me. And I warrant he told you, too."

"He died for love of me: d'you hear?"

"Ah, you'd like people to think so, wouldn't you? Does a man who loves a
woman give away the keepsake she gave him? Look!" Katie leaned forward,
pointing to her ear-rings. "He loved ME," she cried. "He put them in with
his own hands--told me to wear them always. And he kissed me--kissed me
good-bye in the street, where every one could see. He kissed me," she
sobbed. "No other man shall ever do that."

"Ah, that he did!" said a voice level with Zuleika. It was the voice of
Mrs. Batch, who a few moments ago had opened the door for her departing
guests.

"Ah, that he did!" echoed the guests.

"Never mind them, Miss Dobson," cried Noaks, and at the sound of his
voice Mrs. Batch rushed into the middle of the road, to gaze up. "_I_
love you. Think what you will of me. I--"

"You!" flashed Zuleika. "As for you, little Sir Lily Liver, leaning
out there, and, I frankly tell you, looking like nothing so much as a
gargoyle hewn by a drunken stone-mason for the adornment of a Methodist
Chapel in one of the vilest suburbs of Leeds or Wigan, I do but
felicitate the river-god and his nymphs that their water was saved
to-day by your cowardice from the contamination of your plunge."

"Shame on you, Mr. Noaks," said Mrs. Batch, "making believe you were
dead--"

"Shame!" screamed Clarence, who had darted out into the fray.

"I found him hiding behind the curtain," chimed in Katie.

"And I a mother to him!" said Mrs. Batch, shaking her fist. "'What is
life without love?' indeed! Oh, the cowardly, underhand--"

"Wretch," prompted her cronies.

"Let's kick him out of the house!" suggested Clarence, dancing for joy.

Zuleika, smiling brilliantly down at the boy, said "Just you run up and
fight him!"

"Right you are," he answered, with a look of knightly devotion, and
darted back into the house.

"No escape!" she cried up to Noaks. "You've got to fight him now. He and
you are just about evenly matched, I fancy."

But, grimly enough, Zuleika's estimate was never put to the test. Is
it harder for a coward to fig