"It strikes me, my dear, that you know more about it all than I imagined," said Dr. Jones, with a sudden perception which for him was really acute. "I know this, that Mr. Drayton refused her sister shelter on the worst night we have had; that the sisters are orphans devotedly attached to each other; that one sister is ill, and that the other is a prisoner, therefore they cannot meet. They have one or two friends, and the only thing that puzzles me is why the friends do not interfere." "My dear," and Dr. Jones spoke with great irritation, "how can any one interfere? There is nothing wrong about the man. I saw him to-day. I am not going to proclaim him mad to please his wife or any one else." "Then she appealed to you?" "She told me a long story. She wanted more liberty. How can I interfere?" "And she asked you if her husband was--_that_?" "Was what?" "Mad." "She said something, but as I had seen her out, and she said she could not go out, I did not feel very much inclined to take her view of the question," said the doctor, obstinately. "Why are you prejudiced against her?" "Because I saw her meet the _friend_ you speak of, and I drew my own conclusions." "Well, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Mrs. Jones, very warmly, "thoroughly ashamed of yourself. As it happens the meeting was a pure accident. Mr. Skidd has been publishing some poetry; he told me about it at first; in fact he showed the first poem to me, and asked me what I thought," said Mrs. Jones, not without a pardonable little glow of satisfaction. "I thought it beautiful. Then the editor of some magazine in London came down and arranged to have all she wrote. He called by accident and met Mrs. Drayton, and they talked business. How you can put such an ill-natured construction on so simple a thing I cannot make out." "My dear, I really--putting two and two together--I thought----" "I shall be afraid of speaking to any one now for fear of your seeing evil in it--Mr. Paul Lyons, for instance--I shall refuse to shake hands with him." "My dear, I wish you would not go off at a tangent like that. It is a very different thing. You are not in her position; you are not young and beautiful, and.... What in the world is the matter now?" His wife rushed out of the room, and disdained answering him. In the meantime Jean was bravely facing all her difficulties. Her principal difficulty was that she had a woman to deal with in the shape of a landlady who was what Jean termed a "slithery" creature. When she found that Jean looked after things she was impertinent; but that had no effect. Jean looked over her head and ignored her altogether. Then she took to being disobliging, and would neither answer a bell nor give any help. Her next move was to let the kitchen fire out perpetually, and when Jean wanted to heat some soup and get anything hot there was no fire. She calculated that as Grace was very ill and could not be moved, she would get the best of it in the long run.