Madeline could not refrain from a smile as she glanced at her reflection in the mirror; but her present sweet complacency was but momentary. There was a bitter drop in the cup. Was it for this, asked Madeline--this costly dress, those diamonds, and such-like delights--that she sacrificed her home? “No!” she retorted angrily, aloud, and much to Josephine’s astonishment. “No, it is _not_.” Yet even so she was but half convinced. She was presently enveloped in a long crimson velvet mantle reaching to the ground, and trimmed with furs that were as much an outward and visible sign of Mr. West’s wealth as his house and carriage--Russian sables. Then she tied a scarf over her head, took up her fan and gloves, and, in spite of Josephine’s almost impassioned appeals to take a footman and go in the brougham, set out in a hansom alone. She herself gave the reply through the trap, in answer to the “Where to, miss?” And the attendant footman could not catch the address. There was a flavour of wild adventure about the whole expedition that made her heart beat unusually fast. The idea of taking Laurence by storm in his musty chambers, of cajoling him into a more amenable frame of mind, of dining with him _tête-à-tête_, of trying the effect of her much-augmented charms upon her own husband--for she had now fully learnt to know the value of youth, beauty, and dress--all carried her away out of her usual somewhat languorous frame of mind. She felt a little nervous as she stepped out of the hansom in the vicinity of the gloomy old Temple, and proceeded to Laurence’s chambers, as before, on foot. Fortunately the pavement was dry, and her dainty shoes were none the worse. She came to the door, and rang a pretty loud peal _this_ time, smiling to herself as she thought of Laurence sitting over his solitary meal, probably by the light of an equally solitary candle. The door was opened by a curious jerk, and by some invisible agency, and she beheld before her, half way up the stairs, the bearded beldame, carrying a heavy tray, who, unable to turn her head, shouted out querulously--“If that’s the washing, come in. I hope to gracious you’ve done his shirts a bit better nor last week. They _were_ a sight; and his collars! deary, deary me!” And thus ejaculating, she rounded the staircase, and was lost to view; but still she shouted, though her voice did _not_ come like a falling star. “You can go in by the other door, and lay them in his bedroom, and leave the basket.” Madeline was half suffocated with suppressed laughter as she tripped quickly up after this authoritative old person, and as she went she removed her head gear, and when she came to the top landing, she rapidly divested herself of her long cloak.