Your mistress is
a perfect lady!" Mrs. Rook said to the servant, with a burst of
enthusiasm. "I can carve for myself, thank you; and I don't care how
long Miss Emily keeps me waiting."

As they ascended the steps leading into the house, Alban asked Emily if
he might look again at her locket.

"Shall I open it for you?" she suggested.

"No: I only want to look at the outside of it."

He examined the side on which the monogram appeared, inlaid with
diamonds. An inscription was engraved beneath.

"May I read it?" he said.

"Certainly!"

The inscription ran thus: "In loving memory of my father. Died 30th
September, 1877."

"Can you arrange the locket," Alban asked, "so that the side on which
the diamonds appear hangs outward?"

She understood him. The diamonds might attract Mrs. Rook's notice; and
in that case, she might ask to see the locket of her own accord. "You
are beginning to be of use to me, already," Emily said, as they turned
into the corridor which led to the waiting-room.

They found Sir Jervis's housekeeper luxuriously recumbent in the easiest
chair in the room.

Of the eatable part of the lunch some relics were yet left. In the pint
decanter of sherry, not a drop remained. The genial influence of the
wine (hastened by the hot weather) was visible in Mrs. Rook's flushed
face, and in a special development of her ugly smile. Her widening lips
stretched to new lengths; and the white upper line of her eyeballs were
more freely and horribly visible than ever.

"And this is the dear young lady?" she said, lifting her hands in
over-acted admiration. At the first greetings, Alban perceived that
the impression produced was, in Emily's case as in his case, instantly
unfavorable.

The servant came in to clear the table. Emily stepped aside for a minute
to give some directions about her luggage. In that interval Mrs. Rook's
cunning little eyes turned on Alban with an expression of malicious
scrutiny.

"You were walking the other way," she whispered, "when I met you." She
stopped, and glanced over her shoulder at Emily. "I see what attraction
has brought you back to the school. Steal your way into that poor little
fool's heart; and then make her miserable for the rest of her life!--No
need, miss, to hurry," she said, shifting the polite side of her toward
Emily, who returned at the moment. "The visits of the trains to your
station here are like the visits of the angels described by the poet,
'few and far