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The green-baize covered card-table was adorned with gaudily-bound annuals or books of beauty, placed at right angles; but Robert Audley did not avail himself of these literary distractions. He seated himself upon one of the rickety chairs, and waited patiently for the advent of the schoolmistress. He could hear the hum of half-a-dozen voices in a room near him, and the jingling harmonies of a set of variations in Deh Conte, upon a piano, whose every wire was evidently in the last stage of attenuation.

He had waited for about a quarter of an hour, when the door was opened, and a lady, very much dressed, and with the setting sunlight of faded beauty upon her face, entered the room.

“Mr. Audley, I presume,” she said, motioning to Robert to reseat himself, and placing herself in an easy-chair opposite to him. “You will pardon me, I hope, for detaining you so long; my duties—”

“It is I who should apologize for intruding upon you,” Robert answered, politely; “but my motive for calling upon you is a very serious one, and must plead my excuse. You remember the lady whose name I wrote upon my card?”

“Perfectly.”

“May I ask how much you know of that lady’s history since her departure from your house?”

“Very little. In point of fact, scarcely anything at all. Miss Graham, I believe, obtained a situation in the family of a surgeon resident in Essex. Indeed, it was I who recommended her to that gentleman. I have never heard from her since she left me.”

“But you have communicated with her?” Robert asked, eagerly.

“No, indeed.”

Mr. Audley was silent for a few moments, the shadow of gloomy thoughts gathering darkly on his face.

“May I ask if you sent a telegraphic dispatch to Miss Graham early in last September, stating that you were dangerously ill, and that you wished to see her?”

Mrs. Vincent smiled at her visitor’s question.

“I had no occasion to send such a message,” she said; “I have never been seriously ill in my life.”

Robert Audley paused before he asked any further questions, and scrawled a few penciled words in his note-book.

“If I ask you a few straightforward questions about Miss Lucy Graham, madam,” he said. “Will you do me the favor to answer them without asking my motive in making such inquiries?”

“Most certainly,” replied Mrs. Vincent. “I know nothing to Miss Graham’s disadvantage, and have no justification for making a mystery of the little I do know.”

“Then will you tell me at what date the young lady first came to you?”

Mrs. Vincent smiled and shook her head. She had a pretty smile—the frank smile of a woman who had been admired, and who has too long felt the certainty of being able to please, to be utterly subjugated by any worldly misfortune.

“It’s not the least use to ask me, Mr. Audley,” she said. “I’m the most careless creature in the world; I never did, and never could remember dates, though I do all in my power to impress upon my girls how important it is for their future welfare that they should know when William the Conqueror began to reign, and all that kind of thing. But I haven’t the remotest idea when Miss Graham came to me, although I know it was ages ago, for it was the very summer I had my peach-colored silk. But we must consult Tonks—Tonks is sure to be right.”

Robert Audley wondered who or what Tonks could be; a diary, perhaps, or a memorandum-book—some obscure rival of Letsome.

Mrs. Vincent rung the bell, which was answered by the maid-servant who had admitted Robert.

“Ask Miss Tonks to come to me,” she said. “I want to see her particularly.”

In less than five minutes Miss Tonks made her appearance. She was wintry and rather frost-bitten in aspect, and seemed to bring cold air in the scanty folds of her somber merino dress. She was no age in particular, and looked as if she had never been younger, and would never grow older, but would remain forever working backward and forward in her narrow groove, like some self-feeding machine for the instruction of young ladies.