"Shall I go to her room and try if I can be of any comfort to her?" mused Jessie, as she went up to her own snug little den on the third floor. "Better not, perhaps. I like to hug my sorrows. I should hate any one who thought their prattle could lessen my pain. She will bear hers best alone, I dare say. But what can it be? Not any quarrel with him. They could hardly quarrel by telegraph or post--they who are all honey when they are together. It is some scandal--something that old demon with the eyebrows said yesterday. I am sure of it--a talk between two elderly women with closed doors always means Satan's own mischief." All three ladies went out in the carriage after luncheon--a dreary, dusty drive, towards Edgware--past everlasting bricks and mortar, as it seemed to Christabel's tired eyes, which gazed at the houses as if they had been phantoms, so little human meaning had they for her--so little did she realize that in each of those brick and plaster packing-cases human beings lived, and, in their turn, suffered some such heart-agony as this which she was enduring to-day. "That is St. John's Wood up yonder, isn't it?" she asked, as they passed Carlton Hill, speaking for almost the first time since they left Mayfair. "Yes." "Isn't it somewhere about there Miss Stella Mayne lives, the actress we saw the other night?" asked Christabel, carelessly. Her aunt looked at her with intense surprise,--how could she pronounce _that_ name, and to ask a frivolous question? "Yes; she has a lovely house called the Rosary. Mr. FitzPelham told me about it," answered Jessie. Christabel said never a word more as the carriage rolled on by Cricklewood and the two Welsh Harps, and turned into the quiet lanes about Hendon, and so home by the Finchley Road. She had found out what she wanted to know. When afternoon tea was served in the little third drawing-room, where Mrs. Tregonell sat resting herself after the dust and weariness of the drive, Christabel was missing. Dormer brought a little note for her mistress. "Miss Courtenay gave me this just before she went out, ma'am." "Out! Has Miss Courtenay gone out?" "Yes, ma'am; Daniel got her a cab five minutes ago." "To her dressmaker, I suppose," said Mrs. Tregonell, trying to look indifferent. "Don't be uneasy about me, Auntie," wrote Christabel: "I am going on an errand about which I made up my mind last night. I may be a little late for dinner--but as I shall go and return in the same cab, you may feel sure that I shall be quite safe. Don't wait dinner for me." CHAPTER IX. "LOVE IS LOVE FOR EVERMORE."