"Clifford is responsible for this, I think," said Bertha. "The boys are at the same school, and they've been very kind to him. I think she's very amusing, and a good sort." "Oh, quite a character! She told me she met her husband at Blackpool. He fell in love with her when she was playing Prince Charming in No. 2 B Company on tour with the pantomime _Little Miss Muffet_." "Just what one would have thought!" said Lady Kellynch, rather tragically. "I've come to ask you if you'll go with Percy to the Queen's Hall to-morrow," Bertha said. "He wants you to come so much." The mother delightedly consented. "Curious fad that is the mania for serious music," said Lady Gertrude. "You don't share your husband's taste for it, it seems?" "Well, I do, really. But it's such a treat for him to take his mother out!" said Bertha tactfully. "I say, Bertha, may I come back with you? I'm going back to school next week." "Of course you shall, if your mother likes." His mother was glad to agree. She did not feel inclined to discuss Mrs. Pickering with the boy that evening. "Try and make him see what an awful woman she is," she murmured. "I will; but it isn't dangerous," laughed Bertha. "Madeline is spending the evening with me to-morrow." "Oh yes, that nice quiet girl. By the way, do you know, I heard she was engaged to young Charles Hillier. And then somewhere else I was told it was Mr. Rupert Denison." "It's neither," calmly replied Bertha, "But I believe each of them proposed to her." "Is that a fact? Dear me! Just fancy her refusing them both! What a grief for poor Mrs. Irwin!" Bertha laughed as she remembered that as a matter of fact Madeline had accepted both, within two days. CHAPTER XXVI NEWS FROM VENICE Madeline was sitting one afternoon with her mother in their little Chippendale flat, all inlaid mahogany and old-fashioned chintz, china in cabinets, and miniatures on crimson velvet; it was so perfectly in keeping that the very parlourmaid's cap looked Chippendale, and it somehow suggested Hugh Thomson's illustrations to Jane Austen's books. Mrs. Irwin and Madeline were not, however, in the least degree like Miss Austen's heroines and their mothers, except that Mrs. Irwin, though very thin and elegant, had this one resemblance to the immortal Mrs. Bennet in "Pride and Prejudice": "the serious object of her life was to get her daughter married; its solace, gossiping and news." Also she had much of the same querulousness, and complained every night of nerves, and each morning of insomnia. Madeline was reading John Addington Symonds' Renaissance and everything that she could get on the subject of Italian history and cinquecento art. These studies she pursued still as a sort of monument to Rupert, or as a link with him. And to-day, as she was waiting for Bertha to call and take her out, she received a letter from him, from Venice.