What of her mother ?" "Only this"-- Lady Kingsland arose as she spoke, her face deathly white, her pale eyes glittering--"the mother is a myth and a mystery.

Report says Captain Hunsden was married in America--no one knows where--and America is a wide place.

No one ever saw the wife; no one ever heard Miss Hunsden speak of her mother; no one ever heard of that mother's death.

I leave Sir Everard Kingsland to draw his own inferences." She swept from the room with a mighty rustle of silk.

A dark figure crouching on the rug, with its ear to the keyhole, barely had time to whisk behind a tall Indian cabinet as the door opened.
It was Miss Sybilla Silver, who was already asserting her prerogative as amateur lady's-maid.
My lady shut herself up in her own room for the remainder of the evening, too angry and mortified for words to tell.