"When Dick does go," said Roger meditatively,--"moon looks jolly, doesn't it, peeping out behind the tower?--I wonder whether we shall have trouble with the other woman, the one who was with him when he was taken ill." "At Fontainebleau?" "Yes. I hear she was not at all a common person either, and as handsome as paint." At the back of his mind Roger had a rueful, half-envious feeling that really the luck had been with Dick: one pretty woman after another, while he, Roger, plodded along as good as gold and as dull as ditch water, and only had to provide for the babes of these illicit unions. It did not seem fair. "Perhaps there is another child there," he said. "Oh no, no!" said Janey, wincing. "It's no use saying, 'Oh no, no!' my good girl. It may be, 'Oh yes, yes!' The possibility has to be faced." Roger spoke as a man of the world. "There may be a whole brood of them for aught we know." "Do you think he may possibly have married this--second one?" said Janey tentatively. "No, I don't. If he had, she wouldn't have bolted. Besides, if Dick had married anyone, I do believe it would have been Mary Deane. Well, she's off our hands, poor thing. She won't trouble us again, but I don't expect we shall get off as easy with number two." CHAPTER XXVII "Erfahrungen haben ist nichts, aber aus allen Erfahrungen ein reines Herz gerettet zu haben, Alles." L. HABICHT. It was the second week in August. Mrs. Stoddart had arrived at Noyes, and had driven over to see Annette, and to make the acquaintance of the Miss Nevills. She was an immediate success with them, possibly because she intended to be one, and knew how to set about it. The Miss Nevills had two worlds, the social and the literary, and each one had "right people" in it. In the social world the right people were of course those who belonged to the same social order as themselves, who were connected with, or related to, or friends of Nevills, or were connected with, or related to, or friends of the connections and relatives and friends of Nevills. Mrs. Stoddart allowed her visiting list to be probed, and quickly established herself as one of the right people. She knew people they knew. Her sister Lady Brandon was a frequent visitor at the Deanery of St. Botolph's, where they had lunched during the Church Congress. And it was her niece who became the second Mrs. Templeton when the first Mrs. Templeton, known of the Miss Nevills, died.