"He began to talk about you, mother. Spoke of your good manners. I ought to have knocked him down for his impudence."
"Did he reveal his secret?"
"No. He gave me a warning—as I told you—and he went away."
Lady Woodroffe looked up, with a perfectly calm face.
"I believe I could tell you something about his secret." Truth was stamped plainly on that marble brow, with all the other virtues which belong to the grande dame de par le monde. "The woman Haveril is, I believe, crazed. The man is a fool, except in making money, where he is, I dare say, a knave. They are aided and abetted by a man of your name, a Richard Woodroffe, who is clearly making money by the conspiracy—and a girl they call Molly Something."
"What? Is Molly in it?"
"Pray, are you concerned with that person as well as——?"
"She is a protégée of Hilarie. It was there I met her. As for the fellow, Richard Woodroffe, he is just a horrid little cad."
"Well. That will do. You need not worry yourself about it, Humphrey. I am busy now." She turned to her work, having been interrupted in an essay on the treatment of hardened sinners, considered in connection, I believe, with the case of Jane Cakebread.