amount of combustion could have prevented the disclosure
at an inquest of the ignominious facts.

* * * * *

During tea he laughed loudly at Milly's descriptions of the hockey
match, which had been a great success. Leonora had kept goal with
distinction, and admitted that she rather enjoyed the game.

'So it is arranged?' said Leonora, with a hint of involuntary surprise,
when he handed her the mortgage to sign.

'Didn't I tell you so this morning?' he answered loftily. There is
always a despicable joy in resuscitating a lie which events have changed
into a truth.

He insisted on retiring early that night. In the bedroom he remarked:
'Your friend Twemlow's had to go to London to-day, and may return
straight from there to New York. I had a note from him. He sent you his
kindest regards and all that sort of thing.'

'Then we mayn't see him again?' she said, delicately fingering her hair
in front of the pier-glass.

CHAPTER VI

COMIC OPERA

Early one evening a few weeks later, Leonora, half attired for the gala
night of the operatic performance, was again delicately fingering her
hair in that large bedroom whose mirrors daily reflected the leisured
process of her toilette. Her black skirt trimmed with yellow made a
sudden sharp contrast with the pale tints of her corset and her long
bare arms. The bodice lay like a trifling fragment on the blue-green
eiderdown of her bed, a pair of satin shoes glistened in front of the
fire, and two chairs bore the discarded finery of the day. The
dressing-table was littered with silver and ivory. A faint and charming
odour of violets mingled mysteriously with the warmth of the fire as
Leonora moved away from the pier-glass between the two curtained windows
where the light was centred, and with accustomed hands picked up the
bodice apparently so frail that a touch might have ruined it.

The door was brusquely opened, and some one entered.

'Not dressed, Rose?' said Leonora, a little startled. 'We ought to be
going in ten minutes.'

'Oh, mother! I mustn't go. I mustn't really!'

The tall slightly-stooping girl, with her flat figure, her plain shabby
serge frock, her tired white face, and the sinister glance of the
idealist in her great, fretful eyes, seemed to stand there and accuse
the whole of Leonora's existence. Utterly absorbed in the imminent
examination, her brain a welter of sterile facts, Rose found all the
seriousness of life