there are other things he has been mentioning in the same way. If any
instinct is to be relied upon it is a mother's, and mine amounted almost
to second sight. I sent Master George a telegram, and he came in last
night."

"Well?"'

"Not a word! There was bad blood between them, but that was all I could
get out of him. Vulgar disagreeables between Bob, of all people, and his
greatest friend! If you could have seen the poor fellow sitting where
you are sitting now, like a prisoner in the dock! I put him in the
witness-box instead, and examined him on scraps of Bob's letters to me.
It was as unscrupulous as you please, but I felt unscrupulous; and the
poor dear was too loyal to admit, yet too honest to deny, a single
thing."

"And?" said I, as Bob's mother paused again.

"And," cried she, with conscious melodrama in the fiery twinkle of her
eye--"and, I know all! There is an odious creature at the hotel--a
widow, if you please! A 'ripping widow' Bob called her in his first
letter; then it was 'Mrs. Lascelles'; but now it is only 'some people'
whom he escorts here, there, and everywhere. _Some_ people, indeed!"

Catherine smiled unmercifully. I relied upon my nod.

"I needn't tell you," she went on, "that the creature is at least twenty
years older than my baby, and not at all nice at that. George didn't
tell me, mind, but he couldn't deny a single thing. It was about her
that they fell out. Poor George remonstrated, not too diplomatically, I