"  Alaric  will  be  here  in  half  an  hour.  He  wanted
me  to  see  you  first."

"  Miss  Oldcastle  has  gone  to  London."

For  the  first  time  Miss  Burne  saw  trouble  in
the  direction  in  which  she  had  been  interested,
and  she  stiffened  dangerously.  She  was  in  an
atmosphere  of  sinister  surprises.
206  JENNY

"  There  has  been  a  very  wrong  state  of  things
existing  without  my  being  aware  of  it,"  began
Emma.
Miss  Burne's  mind  was  becoming  more  and
more  confused.  Interested  as  she  was  in  Alaric
and  Jenny,  she  could  not  help  wondering  what
the  life  of  this  woman  had  been  since  they  parted.
The  change  was  so  dramatic.  She  had  seen  her
last  a  beauty,  in  the  most  exclusive  social  set.
How  had  she  lived  since  that  time,  and  what  had
that  life  been  to  mark  her  face  with  such  deep
evidences  of  suffering  ?

Alaric  would  be  there  soon,  however,  and  she
pulled  herself  together  in  order  to  have  a  full
knowledge  of  the  situation.
Emma  went  on.
"  Alaric  knows  very  little  of  the  world,  Isabel."

"  Very  little,  I  am  glad  to  say."

Emma  wondered  why  anybody  should  be  glad
to  say  that,  but  she  continued  :

"  He  might  otherwise  have  heard  of  Miss  Old-
castle  before  he  met  her."

Miss  Burne  looked  at  her  sharply.
"  Who  is  Miss  Oldcastle  ?  "

"  You  may  have  heard  her  name."  An  idea
struck  her.  As  the  shortest  way,  she  took  up  a
paper  with  a  paragraph  about  Jenny  in  it,  and
handed  it  to  her  sister-in-law.  Miss  Burne  read
it  slowly,  and  with  a  growing  tension  of  feature.
At  last  she  put  it  down.
