"Poor woman. By the way, Colonel, what was your wife's real opinion of Miss Hest? I could never quite understand." Towton was silent for a few minutes. "It is hard to say. Ida told me that she really liked Miss Hest for a long time, and thought that she was a genuine friend. But Miss Hest showed the cloven foot by trying to get Ida married to Maunders, and----" "Why to Maunders?" "Because he was under Miss Hest's thumb, and if he obtained possession of Ida's fortune by marriage Miss Hest undoubtedly would have had the spending of it." "But this marriage to Francis. How could that be when Francis didn't exist?" "Oh, I think that was a mere blind to make Ida fancy Francis was a real person and not Miss Hest in disguise. I can never understand," added the Colonel with a thoughtful look, "how it was that Ida didn't detect the woman under the man. Women are so quick in these matters." "It was the very boldness of the disguise," said Vernon emphatically. "I was taken in myself at that Georgian Hall Bazaar. A less clever woman than Miss Hest would have made herself look utterly different to her natural self. As it was, she scarcely changed her looks at all save by wearing a man's dress and painting that cicatrice on her face. Anyone would have said that the supposed brother was the sister dressed up. Such actually was the case, and--well, you know that everyone was taken in. A thousand pities, Colonel, that Miss Hest did not apply her splendid faculties to better purpose. She was undeniably very clever." "A criminal genius, as we have often said when we talked of The Spider. I must say that Professor Gail, although he admired her talents, was staggered when he found out from the papers that she was the renowned Spider. I believe he had a fit. However, he has now made up endless romantic stories about her, and actually got an engagement with his wife on the strength of having known her. It's an ill wind which blows no one any good." "If Frances Hest had lived and could have escaped hanging and imprisonment, Colonel, she would have been engaged at a music-hall to appear at a salary of hundreds a week. This age likes romantic criminality." "I think Miss Hest's criminality was prosaic in the extreme," said the Colonel very drily. "She couldn't earn money honestly and therefore took the left-handed path. All her philanthropy was a sham, and I really believe that she had the Bolly Dam built less to supply the villages with water than to protect herself from arrest." "But the human lives----"