"It will displease Lord Sandilands, to whom I am closely related, if the fact of my being married is talked about. I am separated from Mr. Lloyd, and it is customary for singers to retain their own names. Mine is Grace Lambert. If you desire to please his lordship, you may do so by keeping silence on this subject, by not telling anyone that you ever saw me at Brighton under another name." With the shrewdness which most women of her class and calling possess by nature, and which the necessities of her struggling career as a lodging-housekeeper had developed, Mrs. Bush instantly perceived her own interest in this affair, and replied very civilly that she was sure she should never mention anything his lordship would wish concealed; and that she was not given to gossip, thank goodness! never had been when she had a house herself, and which her opinion had always been as lodgers' business was their own and not hers. Consequent, she had never said a word about the poor dear gentleman what had died so sudden,--at this point of her discourse Gertrude's jaded nerves thrilled again with pain,--although it had injured her house serious. With a last effort of self-command, Gertrude listened to her apparently unmoved, and dismissed her, with an intimation that she should return in the morning to take her place by Lord Sandilands. Mrs. Bush had both a talent and a taste for nursing invalids, and she established herself in the darkened room, there to watch the troubled sleeper, with cheerful alacrity. Her thoughts were busy with Gertrude, however, and with what she had said to her. "So she's his near relation, is she?" thus ran Mrs. Bush's cogitations. "_What_ relation now, I wonder? Lambert is not a family name on any side, and he called her Miss Keith too--and I'll be hanged if he knew she was married! I'm sure he didn't. There's something queer in all this; but it's not my affair. However, if his lordship asks me any questions, I'm not going to hold my tongue to him. Separated from Mr. Lloyd! I wonder was she ever really married to him? She looked like it, and spoke like it, though; a more respectable young woman in her ways never came to my place, for the little time she was in it. I wonder what she has left him for?--though in my belief it's a good job for her, and he's a bad lot."