‘No one, I think,’ said Madeline, through a little edged smile. ‘On that point you will hardly be criticized.’ Mrs. Innes, with clasped hands, was sunk in thought. She raised her eyes with a conviction in them which she evidently felt to be pathetic. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘there is something in what the padres say about our reaping the reward of our misdeeds in this world--some of us, anyway. If I had stayed in New York--’ ‘Yes?’ said Madeline. ‘I shall wake up presently,’ she reflected, ‘and find that I have been dreaming melodrama.’ But that was a fantastic underscoring of her experience. She knew very well she was making it. Mrs. Innes, again wrapped in astonished contemplation, did not reply. Then she jumped to her feet with a gesture that cast fortunes back into the lap of fate. ‘One thing is certain,’ she said; ‘I can’t do anything NOW, can I?’ Madeline laid hold of silence and made armour with it. At all events, she must have time to think. ‘I decline to advise you,’ she said, and she spoke with a barely perceptive movement of her lips only. The rest of her face was stone. ‘How unkind and unforgiving you are! Must people would think the loss of a hundred thousand pounds about punishment enough for what I have done. You don’t seem to see it. But on top of that you won’t refuse to promise not to tell Horace?’ ‘I will not bind myself in any way whatever.’ ‘Not even when you know that the moment I hear of the--death I intend to--to--’ ‘Make an honest man of him? Not even when I know that.’ ‘Do you want me to go down on my knees to you?’ Madeline glanced at the flowered fabric involved and said, ‘I wouldn’t, I think.’ ‘And this is to hang over me the whole season? I shall enjoy nothing--absolutely NOTHING.’ The blue eyes were suddenly eclipsed by angry tears, which the advent of a servant with cards checked as suddenly. ‘Goodbye, then, dear,’ cried Mrs. Innes, as if in response to the advancing rustle of skirts in the veranda. ‘So glad to have found you at home. Dear me, has Trilby made her way up--and I gave such particular orders! Oh, you NAUGHTY dog!’ Chapter 3.VII. From the complication that surged round Miss Anderson’s waking hours one point emerged, and gave her a perch for congratulation. That was the determination she had shown in refusing to let Frederick Prendergast leave her his money, or any part of it.