"As a playwright that should please you," she said coldly, "anything for an advertisement. Well, tell us what has been discovered?"
"Nothing as far as I know, Miss Monk."
"Oh!" she raised her fine eyebrows. "I understood," she glanced at Miss Destiny, "that you promised to come and inform my aunt of any new developments. As you are here, I thought that something had been discovered."
"Nothing has been discovered, Miss Monk. I simply came here to see an old servant of my mother's, who keeps The Robin Redbreast, and intend to stay for a few days." Of course this was a white lie, but I had to make some excuse, for her troubled eyes were searching my face intently.
"Mrs. Gilfin," said she, a smile relaxing the corners of her mouth and heaving what I took to be a sigh of relief, "I am fond of Mrs. Gilfin."
"And she is fond of you, Miss Monk. Had she never spoken to you about me?"
"No," was the reply, so my artful question, failed in its effect. Then the conversation languished, and Miss Destiny babbled to excuse her lack of hospitality. Lucinda had left the room.
"I should give you a cup of tea, Gertrude, and you also, Mr. Vance. But the kettle is not boiling, and the baker has not come, so you must excuse me."
"I am not hungry, thank you, Miss Destiny. What a comfortable little place you have here."
In my desperate desire to propitiate the little woman, I told a lie, and Miss Monk saw that I did, for her lip curled, so contemptuously, that the color came to my cheeks. I had been undiplomatic, for the word I had used did not apply in the least to the bare surroundings. The shed--it had originally been a shed, as I afterwards learned--was divided by frail partitions into four small rooms: two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a parlor. These were furnished with the flotsam and jetsam of auction rooms, in an insufficient manner. If Miss Destiny had contracted the vice of avarice from the late Gabriel Monk, she had done so very thoroughly. The bare wooden walls, the drugget on the floor, the four or five sticks of shaky furniture, and the evil-smelling oil stove, made up a picture of insistent penury. And Miss Destiny, lean-faced, keen-eyed and restless, looked like the hag Poverty herself, as she hovered about the bleak room. And even she saw through my lying remark.