"Thank you very much," she said. "I see it was all a mistake. I must have been wrong about the address." She spoke hurriedly--for she had heard in the shop a step that she knew. For one moment a white face peered in at the glass door--then vanished; it was Miss Eden's face--her face as it had been when she told of her lost lover who died waving his sword at Elendslaagte! But the telling of that tale had moved Mrs. Despard to no such passion of pity as this. For from that face now something was blotted out, and the lack of it was piteous beyond thought. "Thank you very much. I am so sorry to have troubled you," she said, and somehow got out of the plush parlour, and through the shop, fruit-filled, orange-scented. At the station there was still time, and too much time. The bookstall yielded pencil, paper, envelope, and stamp. She wrote-- "Ella, dear, whatever happens, I am always your friend. Let me know--can I do anything for you? I know all about everything now. But don't think I'm angry--I am only so sorry for you, dear--so very, very sorry. Do let me help you." She addressed the letter to Miss Eden at the greengrocer's. Afterwards she thought that she had better have left it alone. It could do no good, and it might mean trouble with her sister-in-law, for Miss Eden, late Mrs. Cave, the happy wife and mother. She need not have troubled herself--for the letter came back a week later with a note from Mrs. Eden of the bursting, bright-buttoned, velvet bodice. Ellen had gone away--no one knew where she had gone. Mrs. Despard will always reproach herself for not having rushed towards the white face that peered through the glass door. She could have done something--anything. So she thinks, but I am not sure. * * * * * "And it was none of it true, Bill," she said piteously, when, Mabel and Gracie safely tucked up in bed, she told him all about it. "I don't know how she could. No dead lover--no retired tea-broker--no pretty house, and sweet-brier hedge with ... and no Baby." "She was a lying lunatic," said Bill. "I never liked her. Hark! what's that? All right, Love-a-duck--daddy's here!" He went up the stairs three at a time to catch up his baby, who had a way of wandering, with half-awake wailings, out of her crib in the small hours. "All right, Kiddie-winks, daddy's got you," he murmured, coming back into the drawing-room with the little soft, warm, flannelly bundle cuddled close to him. "She's asleep again already," he said, settling her comfortably in his arms. "Don't worry any more about that Eden girl, Molly--she's not worth it." His wife knelt beside him and buried her face against his waistcoat and against the little flannel night-gown.