ss than Lady Dunstable, and nobody who would be less grateful
for being helped. I really cannot meddle with it."

She rose as she spoke, and Miss Wigram rose too.

"Couldn't you--couldn't you--" said the girl pleadingly--"just ask Mr.
Meadows to warn Lord Dunstable? I'm thinking of the villagers, and the
farmers, and the schools--all the people we used to love. Father was
there twenty years! To think of the dear place given over--some day--to
that creature!"

Her charming eyes actually filled with tears. Doris was touched, but at
the same time set on edge. This loyalty that people born and bred in the
country feel to our English country system--what an absurd and unreal
frame of mind! And when our country system produces Lady Dunstables!

"They have such a pull!"--she thought angrily--"such a hideously unfair
pull, over other people! The way everybody rushes to help them when they
get into a mess--to pick up the pieces--and sweep it all up! It's
irrational--it's sickening! Let them look after themselves--and pay for
their own misdeeds like the rest of us."

"I can't interfere--I really can't!" she said, straightening her slim
shoulders. "It is not as though we were old friends of Lord and Lady
Dunstable. Don't you see how very awkward it would be? Let me advise
you just to watch the thing a little, and then to apply to somebody in
the Crosby Ledgers neighbourhood. You must have some friends or
acquaintances there, who at any rate could do more than we could. And
perhaps after all it's a mare's nest, and the young man doesn't mean to
marry her at all!"

The girl's anxious eyes scanned Doris's unyielding countenance; then
with a sigh she gave up her attempt, and said "Good-bye." Doris went
with her to the door.

"We shall meet to-morrow, shan't we?" she said, feeling a vague
compunction. "And I suppose this woman will be there again. You can keep
an eye on her. Are you living alone--or are you with friends?"

"Oh, I'm in a boarding-house," said Miss Wigram, hastily. Then as though
she recognised the new softness in Doris's look, she added, "I'm quite
comfortable there--and I've a great deal of work. Good night."

* * * * *

"All alone!--with that gentle face--and that terrible amount of
conscience--hard lines!" thought Doris, as she reflected on her visitor.
"I felt a black imp beside her!"

All the same, the letter which Mrs. Meadows received by the following
morning's post was