‘Strange fancies are not always true,’ says Miss Prior. ‘Sir William, do you agree with Katherine about this adoration?’ Sir William shrugs his shoulders. How should he know? ‘Oh, Billee’s a fool,’ says Lady Forster, in her plaintive voice. ‘Aren’t you, Billee?’ ‘My darling, you forget I married you,’ says Forster, in his tragic tone. Whereat she rolls her handkerchief into a little ball and throws it at him. Mrs. Prior, who has sat on a lounge near the door listening silently to this conversation, now makes up her mind. There is nothing to be hoped for from Crosby. To-morrow, then, she will see this ‘tenant’ of Paul’s, though all the guardians and chaperons in Europe rise up to prevent her. ‘But are you really so sure that your brother is in love with Miss Susan?’ asks Lennox of Lady Forster, in a low tone, unheard by the others. ‘No, I’m not,’ declares she, with astounding frankness. ‘I only wanted to be a tiny bit nasty to Josephine, who, I’m sure, has her eye on him in case another complication fails. No, indeed’—sighing—‘no such luck! Wanderers like George are like confirmed gamblers, or drunkards, or that sort of extraordinary person—they are beyond cure. I’m sure that, in spite of all that pretty Susan’s charms, he will go back to his nasty blacks and his lions and his general tomfoolery.’ CHAPTER XLV. ‘They begin with making falsehood appear like truth, and end with making truth appear like falsehood.’ Mrs. Prior knocks gently at the front-gate of the Cottage, not the little green gate so well known to the Barrys; and after a little delay Mrs. Denis’s martial strides can be heard behind it, and her voice pierces the woodwork. ‘Who’s there?’ ‘It is I, Mrs. Prior.’ Mrs. Prior’s tones are soft and suave and persuasive. ‘That is you, I think, Mrs. Denis. I recognise your voice as that of an old friend. I have been here before, you know, several times, and I quite remember you. My nephew—your master, Mr. Wyndham, has at last let me know about his tenant, and I have come’—very softly this—‘to call on her.’ That she is lying horribly and with set purpose is beyond doubt. To herself she excuses herself with the old, sad, detestable fallacy, that her words are true, whatever the spirit of them may be. Mrs. Denis, astute matron and alert Cerberus as she is (a rather comical combination), is completely taken in. She is the more ready to be deceived, in that she is at her heart, good soul! so unfeignedly glad to think that now, after all this time, her master’s people are coming forward to recognise, and no doubt make much of, the ‘purty darlin’’ under her care. Her care. Never for a moment has she admitted Miss Manning’s right to chaperon Ella, though now on excellent terms with that most excellent lady.