Such knowledge was generally very useful to Flossy, but at present she was puzzled by certain items of news brought to her by Parker. "What does this constant meeting with Mr. Evandale mean?" she asked herself. Then her thoughts went back to the day of Mrs. Meldreth's death--a day which she never remembered without a shudder. She knew very well that the poor old woman had bitterly repented of her share in a deed to which her daughter Sabina and Mrs. Vane had urged her; it had been as much as Mrs. Vane and Sabina, by their united efforts, could do to make her hold her tongue. No fear of the General's vengeance, of Sabina's disgrace, of punishment of any kind, would have ensured her silence very much longer. The old woman had said again and again that she could not bear--in her own words--"to see Miss Enid kep' out of her own." She used to come to Flossy's boudoir and sit there, crying and entreating that she might be allowed to tell the General the truth. She did not seem to care when she was reminded that she herself would probably be punished, and that Sabina and Mrs. Vane had nothing but ruin before them if the truth were known. She had the fear of death on her soul--the fear that her sin would bring her eternal misery. "You are a wickedly selfish woman!" Flossy once said to her, with as near an approach to passion as her temperament would allow. "You think of nothing but your own salvation. Our ruin, body and soul, does not matter to you." And indeed this was true. The terrors of the law had gotten hold of Mrs. Meldreth's conscience. The avenging sword, carried by a religion in which she believed, had pierced her heart. She would have given everything she had in the world to be able to follow the advice given in her Prayer-book, to go to a "discreet and learned minister of God's Word"--Mr. Evandale, for instance--and quiet her conscience by opening her grief to him. But both Sabina and Mrs. Vane were prepared to go to almost any length before they would give her the chance of doing this. Mrs. Vane was of course the leading spirit of the three. Where Sabina only raved and stormed, Mrs. Vane mocked and persuaded. She argued, threatened, coaxed, bribed, in turns; she gave Mrs. Meldreth as much money as she could spare, and promised more for the future; but the poor woman--at first open to persuasion--grew more and more difficult to restrain, and became at last almost imbecile from the pressure of her secret upon her mind. Flossy had begun seriously to consider the expediency of inducing Sabina to consign her mother to a lunatic asylum, or even to employ violent means for the shortening of her days on earth--there was nothing at which her soul would have revolted if her own prosperity could have been secured by it; but Mrs. Meldreth's natural illness and death removed all necessity for extreme measures.