Laura was in a pretty pickle. Did she tell the plain truth, state the pedestrian facts--and this she would have been capable of doing with some address; for she had looked through her hosts with a perspicacity uncommon in a girl of her age; had once again put to good use those 'sharp, unkind eyes' which Mother deplored. She had seen an overworked, underfed man, who nagged like any woman, and made slaves of two weak, adoring ladies; and she very well knew that, as often as her thoughts in future alighted on Mr. Robby, she would think of him pinching and screwing, with a hawk-like eye on a shadowy bishopric. Of her warm feelings for him, genuine or imaginary, not a speck remained. The first touch of reality had sunk them below her ken, just as a drop of cold water sinks the floating grounds in a coffee-pot ... But did she confess this, confess also that, save for a handful of monosyllables, her only exchange of words with him had been a line of Virgil; and, still more humbling, that she had liked his wife and sister better than himself: did this come to light, she would forfeit every sou of the prestige the visit had lent and yet promised to lend her. And, now that the possible moment for parting with this borrowed support had come, she recognised how greatly she had built on it. These thoughts whizzed through her mind, as she darted a look at the four predatory faces that hemmed her in. Tilly's was one of them: the lightly mocking smile sat on it that Laura had come to know so well, since her maladroit handling of Bob. She would kill that smile--and if she had to die for it herself. Still, she must be cautious, wary in picking her steps. Especially as she had not the ghost of an idea how to begin. Meanwhile cries of impatience buzzed round her. "She doesn't want to tell." "Mean brute!" "Shouldn't wonder if it's too dashed shady." "Didn't I SAY he was a bad 'un?" "I bet you there's nothing to tell," said Tilly cockily, and turned up her nose. "Yes, there is," flung out Laura, at once put on the defensive, and as she spoke she coloured. "Look at her! Look how red she's got!" "And after she promised--the sneak!" "I'm not a sneak. I AM going to tell. But you're all in such a blooming hurry." "Oh, fire away, slow-coach!" "Well, girls," began Laura gamely, breathing a little hard.--"But, mind, you must never utter a word of what I'm going to tell you. It's a dead secret, and IF you let on----" "S' help me God!" "Ananias and Sapphira!" "Oh, DO hurry up." "Well ... well, he's just the most--oh, I don't know how to say it, girls--the MOST----" "Just scrumptious, I suppose, eh?" "Just positively scrumptious, and ..." "And what'd he do?" "And what about his old sketch of a wife?" "Her? Oh"--and Laura squeezed herself desperately for the details that WOULD not come--"oh, why she's just a perfect old ... old cat. And twenty years older than him." "What on earth did he marry her for?"