It was late that evening when two men entered Mrs Griffiths' drawing room at Scarborough. One was Mr Griffiths, and the other Horace Aldworth, Nesta's half-brother. Mrs Griffiths was overpowered by Horace's presence. She had spent a wretched time since Nesta had gone. The girl was scarcely out of the house before the elder woman decided that she had done very wrong to lend her money; there was no saying what she might do, nor how she would spend it. She might not go home at all. She was a queer girl--unlike her Flossie. She had done a strange, a most unaccountable thing; just for the sake of a bit of pleasure, she had left her own friends, her mother, her sisters--she had planned it all cleverly, but--and here lay the sting--she had not planned it alone. Flossie was in the thick of the mischief. Mrs Griffiths' uneasiness with regard to Nesta presently melted down into a tender sort of regret. Her real sorrow was for her Flossie, her little black-eyed, dancing, mischievous girl, Flossie, who had always been fond of her father and mother, and who had never given herself airs, but had just delighted in Nesta because she must have some friend, but who would not do what Nesta had done for the wide world. And yet, try as she would, Mrs Griffiths could not get over the fact that Flossie had aided and abetted Nesta; that she knew all about it. Mrs Griffiths thought she could understand. She had recourse to her favourite adage--"Girls will be girls." She remembered the time when she was at school. Girls' schools were somewhat common sort of places in Mrs Griffiths' early days. She remembered how she had smuggled in cakes, how she had secreted sticky sweetmeats in her pockets, how she had defied her teachers, and copied her themes from other girls, and what romps they had had in the attics, and how they had laughed at the teachers behind their backs. All these things Mrs Griffiths had done in the days of her youth; but nevertheless these things did not seem so grave or serious as what Flossie had done. Of course, she would forgive her; catch a mother being long angry with her only child; but then Griffiths--Mrs Griffiths always called her husband by that name--he would be wild. "Griffiths will give it to her, and she's that saucy she'll answer him back, and there'll be no end of a row," thought the poor woman. So it was an anxious-faced, wrinkled, rather elderly woman who started up now to receive the two men. Griffiths came in first. "I have brought Mr Horace Aldworth back with me, wife. Did you receive my telegram?" "I did, dear. You will be wanting a bit of supper. How do you do, Mr Aldworth? I hope your poor mother is easier--suffering less, getting stronger by degrees."