"It is very easy to explain," she said. "It is all through my brother Jock and your son, who is at school with him. And it is I who am Lady Randolph," she said, smiling, supporting him with her arm through his. The shock would have been almost too much for poor Mr. Churchill if she had not been so like a child of his own. The moment this pair had left the room the Contessa raised herself eagerly from the chair. She looked round to Bice in the background with an imperative question. "What does this all mean?" she said, in a voice as different from the languor of her former address as night from day. "Who is it that gives away fortunes, that makes a poor man rich? Did you know all that? Is it that chit of a girl, that piece of simplicity--that--Giove! You have been her friend; you know her secrets. What does it mean?" "She has no secrets," said Bice, coming slowly forward. "She is not like us, she is like the day." "Fool!" the Contessa said, stamping her foot--"don't you see there must be something in it. I am thinking of you, though you are so ungrateful. One knows she is rich, all the money is hers; but I thought it had gone to Sir Tom. I thought it was he who could-- ... Happily, I have always kept her in hand; and you, you have become her friend----" "Madama," said Bice, with ironical politeness, "since it happens that Milady is gone, shall I pour out for you your cup of tea?" "Oh, tea! do I care for tea? when there are possibilities--possibilities!" said the Contessa. She got up from her chair and began to pace about the room, a grand figure in the gathering twilight. As for Bice, some demon of perversity possessed her. She began to move about the tea-table, making the china ring, and pouring out the tea as she had said, betook herself to the eating of cake with a relish which was certainly much intensified by the preoccupation of her patroness. She remembered well enough, very well, what Jock had told her, and her own incredulity; but she would have died rather than give a sign of this--and there was a tacit defiance in the way in which she munched her cake under the Contessa's excited eyes, but this was only a momentary perversity. CHAPTER XXVII. AN ADVENTURESS. "When he told me first, I was angry like you, I would not believe it. Money! that is a thing to keep, I said, not to give away."