with
them so amiably was longing to take the Colonel by his pink throat and
throttle him, nor that it was only a higher chivalry that held him from
this disastrous deed. The Colonel merely felt himself in the presence of
an incomparable innocence; but whether it was Lucy who was innocent, or
Mrs. Tailleur, or the two of them together, he really could not say.

Upstairs, in Mrs. Tailleur's bedroom, Jane Lucy was talking to Mrs.
Tailleur. They were sitting by the hearth while Kitty, clothed in warm
garments, shook out her drenched hair before the fire. She had just told
Jane how Miss Keating had left her, and she had become tearful again
over the telling.

"Need you mind so much? Is she worth it?" said Jane, very much as Robert
had said.

"I don't mind her leaving. I can get over that. But you don't know the
awful things she said."

"No, I don't; but I dare say she didn't mean half of them."

"Didn't she though! I'll show you."

Kitty got up and opened the door into the other room. It was as Miss
Keating had left it.

"Look there," she said, "what she's done."

Jane looked. "I'm not surprised. You did everything for her, so I
suppose she expected you to pack and send her things after her."

"It isn't that. Don't you see? It's--it's the things I gave her. She
flung them back in my face. She wouldn't take one of them. See, that's
the white frock she was wearing, and the fur-lined coal (she'll be so
cold without it), and look, that's the little chain I gave her on her
birthday. She wouldn't even keep the chain."

"Well, I dare say she would feel rather bad about it after she's behaved
in this way."

"It isn't that. It's because they were mine--because I wore them." Kitty
began to sob.

"No, no, dear Mrs. Tailleur----"

"Yes, yes. She--she thought they'd c--c--contaminate her."

Kitty's sobs broke into the shrill laugh of hysteria. Jane led her to
the couch and sat beside her. Kitty leaned forward, staring at the
floor. Now and then she pressed her handkerchief to her mouth, stifling.
Suddenly she looked up into Jane's face.

"Would _you_ mind wearing a frock I'd worn?"

"Of course I wouldn't."

Kitty's handkerchief dropped on to her lap, a soaked ball, an
insufficient dam.

"Oh," she cried, "the beast!--the little, little beast!"

She looked again at Jane, but with a glance half cowed, half candid;
like a child that has proved, indubitably, its predestined naughtiness.

"I didn't mean to use that