"Then you will lose your money," said Mrs. Mellop, with a gesture of despair. "I don't mind losing it, so long as I have love." "Love!" The widow made a face. "Oh! love is all very well, but it isn't money, and money is a necessity." "To you perhaps, Mrs. Mellop, not to me. Ralph would marry me to-morrow if I chose. But I don't choose, as such a marriage would hinder his career. We must wait for better times." "Well, I'm sure I hope you'll get your own way. But you can have no idea how hard your father is," wailed Mrs. Mellop. "He throws me over as coolly as though I were an old shoe, and I shall have to go to-morrow. Oh! the man's mad," she added, in a petty rage, "to think of marrying that horrid woman." "Well, you have had your chance," Audrey said, with a shrug; "and, as I told you, my father has taken his own way. I would rather you had married him." "Then you love me, darling?" cried the effusive widow, caressingly. "No, I don't," rejoined the girl, removing a pair of fond arms which had been thrown round her neck; "but of two evils I choose the least. "You would make a better Lady Branwin than Miss Pearl." "I'm sure I should," assented Mrs. Mellop, with vigour, although she was rather daunted by the refusal of Audrey to accept her advances. "Oh! with all that money I would enjoy myself. And if I married your father, Audrey, I should get him to let you marry Mr. Shawe." "You have no influence with papa, Mrs. Mellop. However, you are no worse off than you were when you came here." "Oh! but I am," cried Mrs. Mellop, quite forgetting the jewellery and clothes that she had bought on the credit of her host's name. "Think of what people will say. My name has been coupled with Sir Joseph's, and it is a shame that he should behave so cruelly. But I shan't submit quietly to seeing him carried off by that woman," raged the widow, walking up and down biting her handkerchief. "I shall tell what I know." "What do you know?" "I know that Sir Joseph goes out night after night prowling about the streets. Ugh! the horrid old man." "How dare you!" cried Audrey, flaming up. "Papa goes to help the poor." Mrs. Mellop laughed contemptuously. "Sir Joseph never helped a single poor person in his life," she said sneeringly. "He goes out for no good purpose, you may be sure. Why, he was out on the night his wife was murdered," hinted Mrs. Mellop, malignantly. "I believe he had something to do with the matter." Audrey had no reason to be fond of her father, who had always treated her selfishly. But this unfounded accusation was too much for her. She sprang at the little widow and shook her. "How dare you talk in that way?" she said in a cold, hard voice. "You can't connect my father with--" "Oh, can't I?" interrupted Mrs. Mellop, extricating herself from the girl's grasp with a shriek. "Why, when I was waiting in Walpole Lane on that night I saw your father on the other side of the road."