"Do the same people live there still, Theresa? Let me see--a Mrs. Grey, was it not?"
"Oh yes, she lives there," slightingly returned Miss Blake. "She had a baby at the close of summer, but it died."
"A baby! Why, she was a young widow? Stay--no--what was it?--Oh, her husband was abroad. Yes, I remember now. Has he come home yet?"
"As much as he ever will come, I expect," observed Miss Blake. "The girl has just as much a husband as I have, Mrs. Cleeve."
"Why, what is it that you would imply?" cried Mrs. Cleeve, struck with the words and the tone.
"I once, quite accidentally, heard her sing, 'When lovely woman stoops to folly?' You know the song? It was, in one sense of the word, sung in character."
"Oh, dear!" cried Mrs. Cleeve! "But--but what does Sir Karl do there?"
"Sir Karl? Oh--he is her landlord."
The taunting kind of way in which Miss Blake said it, turned Mrs. Cleeve's delicate cheeks to a rosy red. All kinds of unpleasant thoughts began crowding into her mind.
"Theresa, what do you mean?" she asked, her voice dropping with its own dread. "Have you any meaning?"