oined.

'I knew she was fond of amusement, but that's what I liked to see. I
wanted to see a house of that sort.'

'Fond of amusement is a very pretty phrase!' said Lady Davenant,
laughing at the simplicity with which her visitor accounted for his
assiduity. 'And did Laura Wing seem to you in her place in a house of
that sort?'

'Why, it was natural she should be with her sister, and she always
struck me as very gay.'

'That was your enlivening effect! And did she strike you as very gay
last night, with this scandal hanging over her?'

'She didn't talk much,' said Mr. Wendover.

'She knew it was coming--she felt it, she saw it, and that's what makes
her sick now, that at _such_ a time she should have challenged you, when
she felt herself about to be associated (in people's minds, of course)
with such a vile business. In people's minds and in yours--when you
should know what had happened.'

'Ah, Miss Wing isn't associated----' said Mr. Wendover. He spoke slowly,
but he rose to his feet with a nervous movement that was not lost upon
his companion: she noted it indeed with a certain inward sense of
triumph. She was very deep, but she had never been so deep as when she
made up her mind to mention the scandal of the house of Berrington to
her visitor and intimated to him that Laura Wing regarded herself as
near enough to it to receive from it a personal stain. 'I'm extremely
sorry to hear of Mrs. Berrington's misconduct,' he continued gravely,
standing before her. 'And I am no less obliged to you for your
interest.'

'Don't mention it,' she said, getting up too and smiling. 'I mean my
interest. As for the other matter, it will all come out. Lionel will
haul her up.'

'Dear me, how dreadful!'

'Yes, dreadful enough. But don't betray me.'

'Betray you?' he repeated, as if his thoughts had gone astray a moment.

'I mean to the girl. Think of her shame!'

'Her shame?' Mr. Wendover said, in the same way.

'It seemed to her, with what was becoming so clear to her, that an
honest man might save her from it, might give her his name and his faith
and help her to traverse the bad place. She exaggerates the badness of
it, the stigma of her relationship. Good heavens, at that rate where
would some of us be? But those are her ideas, they are absolutely
sincere, and they had possession of her at the opera. She had a sense of
being lost and was in a real agony to be rescued. She saw before her a
kind gentleman who had se