you of a permanent
burden, pensioning your mother till her death, and giving you money
whenever you have asked for it? Is that nothing at all, Sabina
Meldreth?"

"It's something, of course," said Sabina stolidly; "but it ain't enough.
I want fifty pounds a quarter, paid regular. If you give me that, I'm
thinking of going back to Whitminster, where there won't be so many
people poking and prying about and asking questions."

Going back to Whitminster! That would be worth paying for indeed! But
Flossy showed no sign of gratification.

"What people have been asking questions?"

"The parson, for one."

"And who else?"

"Well," said Sabina, rather reluctantly, "I won't say that there's any
one else. But the parson's been at me more than once, and he keeps his
eye upon me and preaches at me in church--and I won't stand it!"

"Why do you go to church?" said Mrs. Vane with a faint sneer.

"Because, if I don't, people would say I wasn't respectable," snapped
Miss Meldreth; "and it's no good flying in their faces that way."

"Oh! Then you wish to be thought respectable?"

"Yes, I do; and, what's more, so do you, Mrs. Vane, in your own way.
You're too high and mighty, and pretend to be too ill to have to go to
church; but, if you was me, and heard what folks say of them that stop
away, you'd go yourself."

"Possibly," said Flossy; "we are in different circumstances. Now tell
me--why has Mr. Evandale questioned you?"

"Because of what he heard when mother lay dying, of course. I wrote and
warned you at the time."

"You should have said more then. You should have come and told me the
whole story. Tell it me now."

It was a proof of Flossy's curious power over certain natures that
Sabina Meldreth, wild and undisciplined as she was, seldom thought of
resisting her will when in her very presence. She sat down on a chair
that Mrs. Vane pointed out to her, and recounted, in rapid and not
ill-chosen words, what had passed in her mother's room in the presence
of the Rector and of Enid Vane. Flossy listened silently, tapping her
lips from time to time with her fan.

When the story was ended, she turned on her visitor with a terrible
flash of her usually sleepy eyes.

"You fool," she said; without however raising her voice--"you fool! You
have known this all these months, and have never made your way to me to
tell it! How was I to know that the matter was so important? How was I
to suspect? I guessed something, of cours