CHAPTER IX.
THE LAST OF PERKINS.I daresay my readers will take it for granted that I adopted a fresh name when I went into Mrs. Torwood's service. So I most certainly ought to have done after my previous forgery of a character having been detected. But sometimes one is astonishingly stupid; and the idea of making that very necessary alteration never entered my head. Caroline Jill I had dubbed myself when I dropped the secretly-venerated name of Trecastle, and Caroline Jill I—like an i***t—continued to be, without having the wits to see how foolish it was of me to stick to a name upon which I had brought discredit. I was now to feel the consequences of this imprudence, the penalty being brought about, indirectly, by three of the dogs under my care.
One morning when I went as usual to call
