“Yes”
“I guess he'd think I was a pretty changed pusson! Now, I want you should stay with me, Clementina, and if anybody else comes—”
Maddalena entered the room with a card which she gave to the girl.
“Who is it?” Mrs. Lander demanded.
“Miss Milray.”
“Of cou'se! Well, you may just send wo'd that you can't—Or, no; you must! She'd have it all ova the place, by night, that I wouldn't let you see her. But don't you make any excuse for me! If she asks after me, don't you say I'm sick! You say I'm not at home.”
“I've come about that little wretch,” Miss Milray began, after kissing Clementina. “I didn't know but you had heard something I hadn't, or I had heard something you hadn't. You know I belong to the Hinkle persuasion: I think Belsky's run his board—as Mr. Hinkle calls it.”
Clementina explained how this part of the Hinkle theory had failed, and then Miss Milray devolved upon the belief that he had run his tailor's bill or his shoemaker's. “They are delightful, those Russians, but they're born insolvent. I don't believe he's drowned himself. How,” she broke off to ask, in a burlesque whisper, “is-the-old-tabby?” She laughed, for answer to her own question, and then with another sudden diversion she demanded of a look in Clementina's face which would not be laughed away, “Well, my dear, what is it?”
“Miss Milray,” said the girl, “should you think me very silly, if I told you something—silly?”
“Not in the least!” cried Miss Milray, joyously. “It's the final proof of your wisdom that I've been waiting for?”