"You may trust my feeling towards your niece to last--I never forget an injury.
Is it indiscreet to inquire how you mean to keep Miss Carmina from joining her lover in Quebec?
Does a guardian's authority extend to locking her up in her room ?" Mrs.Gallilee felt the underlying familiarity in these questions--elaborately concealed as it was under an assumption of respect.
"My niece is no longer in my house," she answered coldly.
"Gone!" cried Mr.Le Frank.
She corrected the expression.

"Removed," she said, and dropped the subject there.
Mr.Le Frank took the subject up again.

"Removed, I presume, under the care of her nurse ?" he rejoined.
The nurse?
What did he know about the nurse?
"May I ask-- ?" Mrs.
Gallilee began.
He smiled indulgently, and stopped her there.

"You are not quite yourself to-night," he said.

"Permit me to remind you that your niece's letter to Mr.Ovid Vere is explicit, and that I took the liberty of reading it before I left it at your house." Mrs.Gallilee listened in silence, conscious that she had committed another error.