“A truer word never passed your lips,” said Emma, and escaped before the inevitable warning about sauciness found expression. Mrs. Montmorency drank soberly for an hour to lubricate her reflections. She heard Mornice come in about eight o’clock, and was fired with a desire to go into the passage and denounce her. This project, however, she abandoned for want of material for the accusation. She decided that a dignified letter would be the best means of being rid of the pair of them, and this she set about to write. But, chiefly due to the error of dipping the wrong end of the pen into the ink, the dignity failed to appear on the page. Even in her semi-bemused condition she realised that Eliphalet could hardly be expected to fathom the meaning of her shadow-graphs, and so decided to leave the matter unsettled until the morning. That being so, it was obviously a slight on her maker of cognac to leave the bottle unemptied—and, after all, it was Saturday. She was singing some little trifle of song when, about ten o’clock, she perilously mounted the stairs toward the oblivion of her bed-chamber. With the arrival of the day Mrs. Montmorency was able to approach the problem with a clearer headache. She recollected, with a start, that only a few inches of brick and plaster separated her from her one-time husband. Emma did not offer her breakfast on Sunday mornings, for to do so was to incur a rebuke for sauciness—and so, when dressed, nothing prevented Mrs. Montmorency from getting to work at once upon the eviction of her tenants. For a long while she sat with the pen in her mouth and her brows contracted in thought. To tell the truth, she was not gifted with a high standard of literary attainment. As a girl, she could dash off as many as you please of the “My own darling boy” sort of letters which ended with “tons of love and kisses,” but this severer kind of exchange presented abundant difficulties. With the exception of Eliphalet, none of her husbands, or those who had passed as such, was of a scholarly turn. Harrington May, Mornice’s father, on whose account Eliphalet had divorced her, though by no means a fool, had not troubled to obtrude his erudition upon her. Similarly, none of the other hands through which she had passed had used their skill to mould her intellect. At last, however, she contrived a letter which gave her every sort of satisfaction. It ran: