Hope, ask Mr. Hope," cried Miss Kendal impatiently. "I
know nothing about the things," and she tore her dress from Widow
Anne's detaining hand to hurry home. Mrs. Bolton wailed aloud at
this desertion, and took her way to Hope's lodgings, where she
declared her determination to remain until the artist restored
her apparel.
Lucy for the moment thought little of this interview; but on
reflection she thought it strange that Archie should borrow
clothes from Mrs. Bolton through Sidney. Not that there was
anything strange in Archie's procuring such garments, since he
may have wanted them to clothe a model with. But he could easily
have got such things from his landlady, or, if from Widow Anne,
could have borrowed them direct without appealing to Sidney.
Why, then, had the dead man acted as an intermediate party? This
question was hard to answer, yet Lucy greatly wished for a reply,
since she suddenly remembered how a woman in a dark dress and
with a dark shawl over her head had been seen by Eliza Flight,
the housemaid of the Sailor's Rest, talking to Bolton through the
window. Were the garments borrowed as a disguise, and did the
person who had borrowed them desire that it should be supposed
that Widow Anne was talking to her son? There was a chill hand
clutching Lucy's heart as she went home, for the words of Mrs.
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