reature who did not know the first rudiments of personal honour, the
fine elemental customs of life.

Kitty saw and understood, but she did not hasten to reply, or to set
things right. She met the lofty look unflinchingly, and she had
pride and some little malice too--it would do Mrs. Crozier good, she
thought--in saying, as she looked down on the humming-bird trying to be
an eagle:

"I've had to get things for him-papers and so on, and send them on when
he was away, and even when he was at home I've had to act for him; and
so even when it was locked I had to know where the key was. He asked me
to help him that way."

Mona noted the stress laid upon the word home, and for the first time
she had a suspicion that this girl knew more than even the Logan Trial
had disclosed, and that she was being satirical and suggestive.

"Oh, of course," she returned cheerfully in response to Kitty--"you
acted as a kind of clerk for him!" There was a note in her voice which
she might better not have used. If she but knew it, she needed this
girl's friendship very badly. She ought to have remembered that she
would not have been here in her husband's room had it not been for the
letter Kitty had written--a letter which had made her heart beat so fast
when she received it, that she had sunk helpless to the floor on one of
those soft rugs, representing the soft comfort which wealth can bring.

The reply was like a slap in the face.

"I acted for him in any way at all that he wished me to," Kitty
answered, with quiet boldness and shining, defiant face.

Mona's hand fell away from the green baize desk, and her eyes again lost
their sight for a moment. Kitty was not savage by nature. She had been
goaded as much by the thought of the letter Crozier's wife had written
to him in the hour of his ruin as by the presence of the woman in this
house, where things would never be as they had been before. She had
struck hard, and now she was immediately sorry for it: for this woman
was here in response to her own appeal; and, after all, she might well
be jealous of the fact that Crozier had had close to him for so long and
in such conditions a girl like herself, younger than his own wife, and
prettier--yes, certainly prettier, she admitted to herself.

"He is that kind of a man. What he asked for, any good woman could give
and not be sorry," Kitty convincingly added when the knife had gone deep
enough.

"Yes, he was that kind of a man," responde