"A very impudent manner that girl has," said Miss Pickhill, as the door closed behind Beulah. "Not but what you bring it on yourself, with your slave-driving ways. I suppose she'll be leaving next!"
"Oh, no, she won't!" replied Mrs. Haddington, with a slight laugh.
"Yes, that's what you say, but nowadays girls won't put up with the way you treat them, and so I warn you!"
"You needn't worry: I know too much about Miss Beulah Birtley for her to leave me in a hurry. Now, if you don't mind, it's time I went up to change. I have a theatre-party."
Miss Pickhill said severely: "Theatres and balls! You don't seem to me to think of anything else. Where you get the money from to pay for all this wicked extravagance is more than I can tell! It's no use saying Hubert left you very well-off he didn't leave you with a fortune; and, what's more, if he had it would be taken away from you by the Government. Sometimes I lie awake for hours worrying about the way you live, Lily, and expecting to read in the paper any minute that you've been had up for cheating the, Income Tax, or running a gaming-house."
"Running a gaming-house! Really, Violet - !"
"I wouldn't put it beyond you," said Miss Pickhill darkly. "You can fool all these grand friends of yours, I daresay, but you can't fool me! There's very little you'd stop at, Lily. You've always been the same: out for what you can get, and never mind how! I shall never forget how you threw poor Charlie Thirsk over because Hubert came along with twice his income. Well, I'm sure I don't wish to speak ill of the dead, but I never did like that man, and no more did Father. He always said there was something not quite straight about him, and as for the people he went about with - Well, there's only one word to describe them, and that's flashy! Like that Mr. Seaton-Carew I'm always running into here!"
"There's a remedy for that," retorted Mrs. Haddington. "Don't come here!"
"Oh, I know very well I'm not wanted!" said Miss Pickhill, in no way abashed. "But blood's thicker than water, and I know my duty, Lily!"
With these words she offered her cheek to her sister, a courtesy which Mrs. Haddington acknowledged by touching it with her own, said that there was no need to ring for the butler, since she was quite capable of seeing herself out, and went away. Mrs. Haddington was just about to go up to her bedroom when the door opened again, and her daughter strolled into the room.