CHAPTER XVI. YES--TO LISBETH 148 CHAPTER XVII. GOOD-BY 158 CHAPTER XVIII. YOU THINK I HAVE A SECRET 171 CHAPTER XIX. AND THAT WAS THE END OF IT 181 MISS CRESPIGNY. CHAPTER I. LISBETH. “Another party?” said Mrs. Despard. “Oh yes!” said Lisbeth. “And, of course, a little music, and then a little supper, and a little dancing, and all that sort of thing.” And she frowned impatiently. Mrs. Despard looked at her in some displeasure. “You are in one of your humors, again, Lisbeth,” she said, sharply. “Why shouldn’t I be?” answered Miss Crespigny, not a whit awed by her patroness. “People’s humors are their privileges. I would not help mine if I could. I like them because they are my own private property, and no one else can claim them.” “I should hardly think any one would want to claim yours,” said Mrs. Despard, dryly, but at the same time regarding the girl with a sort of curiosity. Lisbeth Crespigny shrugged her shoulders--those expressive shoulders of hers. A “peculiar girl,” even the mildest of people called her, and as to her enemies, what did they not say of her? And her enemies were not in the minority. But “peculiar” was not an unnatural term to apply to her. She was “peculiar.” Seeing her kneeling close before the fender this winter evening, one’s first thought would have been that she stood apart from other girls. Her very type was her own, and no one had ever been heard to say of any other woman, “she is like Lisbeth Crespigny.” She was rather small of figure, she had magnificent hair; her black brows and lashes were a wonder of beauty; her eyes were dark, mysterious, supercilious. She often frightened people. She frightened modest people with her nerve and coolness, bold people with her savage sarcasms, quiet people with her moods. She had alarmed Mrs. Despard, occasionally, when she had first come to live with her; but after three years, Mrs. Despard, who was strong of nerve herself, had become used to her caprices, though she had not got over being curious and interested in spite of herself. She was a widow, this Mrs. Despard. She had been an ambitious nobody in her youth, and having had the luck to marry a reasonably rich man, her ambition had increased with her good fortune. She was keen, like Lisbeth, quick-witted and restless. She had no children, no cares, and thus having no particular object in life, formed one for herself in making herself pleasingly conspicuous in society.