As soon as Mr. Wedmore entered the drawing-room, where his wife and daughters were discussing some invitations to dinner which were to have been sent out, but about which there was now a doubt, he abruptly ordered the two girls to leave the room.  They obeyed very quietly, but Doreen threw at her mother one imploring glance, and gently pulling her father’s hair, told him that he was not to be a hard, heartless man.

When the door was shut, however, Mr. Wedmore addressed his wife in no very gentle tones.

“Ellen,” said he, curtly, “you must get rid of that baggage they call the nurse.  She’s no more a nurse than you are!”

“And she’s no more his sister than I am, either!” chimed in Mrs. Wedmore, who had risen from her chair in great excitement.

Mr. Wedmore stared at his wife.

“Sister!” cried he, in a voice of thunder.  “Whose sister?  Dudley Horne never had a sister!”

“I know that, but that’s the story they have made up for us; and the girls—­our girls—­are ready to believe it, and I don’t want them to know it isn’t true.”

“Well, whatever she is, and whoever she is, I want her to be outside the house before lunch time,” said Mr. Wedmore.  “I’ve just caught Max with his arm around her, and I haven’t the slightest doubt that it was he who made up the story.  Any tale’s good enough for the old people!  Look at her face—­look at her dress!  She is some hussy who ought never to have been allowed inside the house!”

“It was Doreen who brought her in.  And, to do her justice, George, I believe the girl didn’t want to come,” said Mrs. Wedmore.  “And it’s about Doreen I wanted to talk to you, George.  This coming of Dudley has upset all the good we did by never mentioning him to her.  To-day she’s as much excited, as anxious and as miserable as if they were still engaged.  And—­and—­oh! if the police come here to the house and take him awa-a-ay,”—­and here the poor lady became almost too hysterical to articulate—­“it will break the child’s heart, George; it will indeed.  And, oh! do you think it possible he really did—­really did—­”

“Did what?”

“Oh, you know!  It’s to dreadful to say.  Why do you make me say it?  They say something about his having gone out of his mind, and—­and—­killed somebody.  It isn’t true, George, is it?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure.  Who told you?”

“Max first, and then I learned the rest from the guesses of the girls.  Oh, it is dreadful—­shocking!  And to think of his having been planted down upon us like this, just when I was beginning to hope that Doreen was getting kinder to Mr. Lindsay.”

“It’s all the doing of that idiot Max!” said Mr. Wedmore, angrily.  “I’ll send him out to the Cape, and make an end of it.  He shall go next month.”

“Oh, I didn’t want that,” pleaded Mrs. Wedmore, with a sudden change to tenderness and self-reproach.  “Don’t do anything in a hurry, George, anything you will be sorry for afterward.”