Mr. Blight sullenly recognized the truth of these words. He had been left out in the cold, and he was angry, disappointed, infuriated. “Oh, my new and expensive mourning!” said Mrs. Blight spitefully. “I wouldn’t have put on black for the old creature if I had known the truth. Peters ought to pay me the hundred pounds I have expended. I shall sell every black rag I’ve bought!” Lally arose to retire, and Mr. Harris and Peters attended her from the room. Mr. Harris presently returned, and said gravely: “Miss Wroat is fatigued, and Mrs. Peters thinks her unequal to the task of entertaining guests. At the request of Mrs. Peters, therefore, I have to suggest, sir and madam that you take your leave without again seeing Miss Wroat. I will remain to do the honors of the house, in Miss Wroat’s stead, at your departure.” Mr. and Mrs. Blight, thus quietly dismissed, retired to their room and packed their effects. An hour later their cab was announced, and they came down stairs, the lady leaning on her husband’s arm and weeping with rage. As they sat in the cab, the luggage piled on top, and slowly departed from the house where they had hoped to reign, Mrs. Blight looked back, sobbing in her anguish: “And it might have been ours but for the artful minx I took in, as it were out of the streets. I’ll never do a good action again in all my life--never. And now I must go back to poverty, and scrimp to save what I’ve spent in mourning, and we and our poor dear lambs may fetch up at the union, while that treacherous cat Lally Bird lolls in wealth. O dear! O dear!” CHAPTER XII. A FREAK OF DESTINY. Upon the morning after the burial of Mrs. Wroat, and the utter discomfiture of the fortune-hunting Mr. and Mrs. Blight, Mr. Harris the lawyer called upon Lally. His card, with a message written upon it, was brought up to the young girl in her own room by Toppen, and Lally came down to the drawing-room, accompanied by Peters. Poor Lally looked very small and weak and childlike in her deep mourning garb, but when she lifted her sorrowful black eyes, the lawyer read in them a woman’s capacity for suffering, a woman’s strong and resolute character, a woman’s enlightened and awakened soul. “Good-morning, Miss Wroat,” he said, with paternal kindness, shaking her hand warmly. “You are looking ill. Ought you not to seek change of air and scene?” “I would rather remain here, sir,” said Lally wearily; “that is, if I may.”