Her income would supply the needs of her home,
and then there might probably be a continuation of Lord Fawns. The world
might have done better for him--had he been able to find favour in Violet
Effingham's sight. He was a man capable of love, and very capable of
constancy to a woman true to him. Then he wiped away a tear as he sat down
to sign the huge batch of letters. As he read some special letter in which
instructions were conveyed as to the insufficiency of the Sawab's claims,
he thought of Frank Greystock's attack upon him, and of Frank Greystock's
cousin. There had been a time in which he had feared that the two cousins
would become man and wife. At this moment he uttered a malediction against
the member for Bobsborough, which might perhaps have been spared had the
member been now willing to take the lady off his hands. Then the door was
opened, and the messenger told him that Mrs. Hittaway was in the waiting-
room. Mrs. Hittaway was, of course, at once made welcome to the Under-
Secretary's own apartment.
Mrs. Hittaway was a strong-minded woman--the strongest-minded probably of
the Fawn family--but she had now come upon a task which taxed all her
strength to the utmost.
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