His will seemed to be paralyzed; his actions depended absolutely on what other people told him to do. He took a few steps in the direction of the public-house, hesitated, staggered, and caught at the pillar of one of the station lamps near him.

The porter followed, and took him by the arm once more.

"Why, you've been drinking already!" exclaimed the man, with a suddenly quickened interest in Mr. Bashwood's case. "What was it? Beer?"

Mr. Bashwood, in his low, lost tones, echoed the last word.

It was close on the porter's dinner-time. But, when the lower orders of the English people believe they have discovered an intoxicated man, their sympathy with him is boundless. The porter let his dinner take its chance, and carefully assisted Mr. Bashwood to reach the public-house. "Gin-and-bitters will put you on your legs again," whispered this Samaritan setter-right of the alcoholic disasters of mankind.

If Mr. Bashwood had really been intoxicated, the effect of the porter's remedy would have been marvelous indeed. Almost as soon as the glass was emptied, the stimulant did its work. The long-weakened nervous system of the deputy-steward, prostrated for the moment by the shock that had fallen on it, rallied again like a weary horse under the spur. The dull flush on his cheeks, the dull stare in his eyes, disappeared simultaneously. After a momentary effort, he recovered memory enough of what had passed to thank the porter, and to ask whether he would take something himself. The worthy creature instantly accepted a dose of his own remedy—in the capacity of a preventive—and went home to dinner as only those men can go home who are physically warmed by gin-and-bitters and morally elevated by the performance of a good action.

Still strangely abstracted (but conscious now of the way by which he went), Mr. Bashwood left the public-house a few minutes later, in his turn. He walked on mechanically, in his dreary black garments, moving like a blot on the white surface of the sun-brightened road, as Midwinter had seen him move in the early days at Thorpe Ambrose, when they had first met. Arrived at the point where he had to choose between the way that led into the town and the way that led to the great house, he stopped, incapable of deciding, and careless, apparently, even of making the attempt. "I'll be revenged on her!" he whispered to himself, still absorbed in his jealous frenzy of rage against the woman who had deceived him. "I'll be revenged on her," he repeated, in louder tones, "if I spend every half-penny I've got!"

Some women of the disorderly sort, passing on their way to the town, heard him. "Ah, you old brute," they called out, with the measureless license of their class, "whatever she did, she served you right!"

The coarseness of the voices startled him, whether he comprehended the words or not. He shrank away from more interruption and more insult, into the quieter road that led to the great house.

At a solitary place by the wayside he stopped and sat down. He took off his hat and lifted his youthful wig a little from his bald old head, and tried desperately to get beyond the one immovable conviction which lay on his mind like lead—the conviction that Miss Gwilt had been purposely deceiving him from the first. It was useless. No effort would free him from that one dominant impression, and from the one answering idea that it had evoked—the idea of revenge. He got up again, and put on his hat and walked rapidly forward a little way—then turned without knowing why, and slowly walked back again "If I had only dressed a little smarter!" said the poor wretch, helplessly. "If I had only been a little bolder with her, she might have overlooked my being an old man!" The angry fit returned on him. He clinched his clammy, trembling hands, and shook them fiercely in the empty air. "I'll be revenged on her," he reiterated. "I'll be revenged on her, if I spend every half-penny I've got!" It was terribly suggestive of the hold she had taken on him, that his vindictive sense of injury could not get far enough away from her to reach the man whom he believed to be his rival, even yet. In his rage, as in his love, he was absorbed, body and soul, by Miss Gwilt.

In a moment more, the noise of running wheels approaching from behind startled him. He turned and looked round. There was Mr. Pedgift the elder, rapidly overtaking him in the gig, just as Mr. Pedgift had overtaken him once already, on that former occasion when he had listened under the window at the great house, and when the lawyer had bluntly charged him with feeling a curiosity about Miss Gwilt!

In an instant the inevitable association of ideas burst on his mind. The opinion of Miss Gwilt, which he had heard the lawyer express to Allan at parting, flashed back into his memory, side by side with Mr. Pedgift's sarcastic approval of anything in the way of inquiry which his own curiosity might attempt. "I may be even with her yet," he thought, "if Mr. Pedgift will help me!—Stop, sir!" he called out, desperately, as the gig came up with him. "If you please, sir, I want to speak to you."

Pedgift Senior slackened the pace of his fast-trotting mare, without pulling up. "Come to the office in half an hour," he said; "I'm busy now." Without waiting for an answer, without noticing Mr. Bashwood's bow, he gave the mare the rein again, and was out of sight in another minute.

Mr. Bashwood sat down once more in a shady place by the roadside. He appeared to be incapable of feeling any slight but the one unpardonable slight put upon him by Miss Gwilt. He not only declined to resent, he even made the best of Mr. Pedgift's unceremonious treatment of him. "Half an hour," he said, resignedly. "Time enough to compose myself; and I want time. Very kind of Mr. Pedgift, though he mightn't have meant it."

The sense of oppression in his head forced him once again to remove his hat. He sat with it on his lap, deep in thought; his face bent low, and the wavering fingers of one hand drumming absently on the crown of the hat. If Mr. Pedgift the elder, seeing him as he sat now, could only have looked a little way into the future, the monotonously drumming hand of the deputy-steward might have been strong enough, feeble as it was, to stop the lawyer by the roadside. It was the worn, weary, miserable old hand of a worn, weary, miserable old man; but it was, for all that (to use the language of Mr. Pedgift's own parting prediction to Allan), the hand that was now destined to "let the light in on Miss Gwilt."



XIII. AN OLD MAN'S HEART.

Punctual to the moment, when the half hour's interval had expired, Mr. Bashwood was announced at the office as waiting to see Mr. Pedgift by special appointment.

The lawyer looked up from his papers with an air of annoyance: he had totally forgotten the meeting by the roadside. "See what he wants," said Pedgift Senior to Pedgift Junior, working in the same room with him. "And if it's nothing of importance, put it off to some other time."

Pedgift Junior swiftly disappeared and swiftly returned.

"Well?" asked the father.

"Well," answered the son, "he is rather more shaky and unintelligible than usual. I can make nothing out of him, except that he persists in wanting to see you. My own idea," pursued Pedgift Junior, with his usual, sardonic gravity, "is that he is going to have a fit, and that he wishes to acknowledge your uniform kindness to him by obliging you with a private view of the whole proceeding."

Pedgift Senior habitually matched everybody—his son included—with their own weapons. "Be good enough to remember, Augustus," he rejoined, "that my Room is not a Court of Law. A bad joke is not invariably followed by 'roars of laughter' here. Let Mr. Bashwood come in."

Mr. Bashwood was introduced, and Pedgift Junior withdrew. "You mustn't bleed him, sir," whispered the incorrigible joker, as he passed the back of his father's chair. "Hot-water bottles to the soles of his feet, and a mustard plaster on the pit of his stomach—that's the modern treatment."

"Sit down, Bashwood," said Pedgift Senior when they were alone. "And don't forget that time's money. Out with it, whatever it is, at the quickest possible rate, and in the fewest possible words."

These preliminary directions, bluntly but not at all unkindly spoken, rather increased than diminished the painful agitation under which Mr. Bashwood was suffering. He stammered more helplessly, he trembled more continuously than usual, as he made his little speech of thanks, and added his apologies at the end for intruding on his patron in business hours.

"Everybody in the place, Mr. Pedgift, sir, knows your time is valuable. Oh, dear, yes! oh, dear, yes! most valuable, most valuable! Excuse me, sir, I'm coming out with it. Your goodness—or rather your business—no, your goodness gave me half an hour to wait—and I have thought of what I had to say, and prepared it, and put it short." Having got as far as that, he stopped with a pained, bewildered look. He had put it away in his memory, and now, when the time came, he was too confused to find it. And there was Mr. Pedgift mutely waiting; his face and manner expressive alike of that silent sense of the value of his own time which every patient who has visited a great doctor, every client who has consulted a lawyer in large practice, knows so well. "Have you heard the news, sir?" stammered Mr. Bashwood, shifting his ground in despair, and letting the uppermost idea in his mind escape him, simply because it was the one idea in him that was ready to come out.

"Does it concern me?" asked Pedgift Senior, mercilessly brief, and mercilessly straight in coming to the point.

"It concerns a lady, sir—no, not a lady—a young man, I ought to say, in whom you used to feel some interest. Oh, Mr. Pedgift, sir, what do you think! Mr. Armadale and Miss Gwilt have gone up to London together to-day—alone, sir—alone in a carriage reserved for their two selves. Do you think he's going to marry her? Do you really think, like the rest of them, he's going to marry her?"

He put the question with a sudden flush in his face and a sudden energy in his manner. His sense of the value of the lawyer's time, his conviction of the greatness of the lawyer's condescension, his constitutional shyness and timidity—all yielded together to his one overwhelming interest in hearing Mr. Pedgift's answer. He was loud for the first time in his life in putting the question.

"After my experience of Mr. Armadale," said the lawyer, instantly hardening in look and manner, "I believe him to be infatuated enough to marry Miss Gwilt a dozen times over, if Miss Gwilt chose to ask him. Your news doesn't surprise me in the least, Bashwood. I'm sorry for him. I can honestly say that, though he has set my advice at defiance. And I'm more sorry still," he continued, softening again as his mind reverted to his interview with Neelie under the trees of the park—"I'm more sorry still for another person who shall be nameless. But what have I to do with all this? And what on earth is the matter with you?" he resumed, noticing for the first time the abject misery in Mr. Bashwood's manner, the blank despair in Mr. Bashwood's face, which his answer had produced. "Are you ill? Is there something behind the curtain that you're afraid to bring out? I don't understand it. Have you come here—here in my private room, in business hours—with nothing to tell me but that young Armadale has been fool enough to ruin his prospects for life? Why, I foresaw it all weeks since, and what is more, I as good as told him so at the last conversation I had with him in the great house."

At those last words, Mr. Bashwood suddenly rallied. The lawyer's passing reference to the great house had led him back in a moment to the purpose that he had in view.

"That's it, sir!" he said, eagerly; "that's what I wanted to speak to you about; that's what I've been preparing in my mind. Mr. Pedgift, sir, the last time you were at the great house, when you came away in your gig, you—you overtook me on the drive."

"I dare say I did," remarked Pedgift, resignedly. "My mare happens to be a trifle quicker on her legs than you are on yours, Bashwood. Go on, go on. We shall come in time, I suppose, to what you are driving at."

"You stopped, and spoke to me, sir," proceeded Mr. Bashwood, advancing more and more eagerly to his end. "You said you suspected me of feeling some curiosity about Miss Gwilt, and you told me (I remember the exact words, sir)—you told me to gratify my curiosity by all means, for you didn't object to it."

Pedgift Senior began for the first time to look interested in hearing more.

"I remember something of the sort," he replied; "and I also remember thinking it rather remarkable that you should happen—we won't put it in any more offensive way—to be exactly under Mr. Armadale's open window while I was talking to him. It might have been accident, of course; but it looked rather more like curiosity. I could only judge by appearances," concluded Pedgift, pointing his sarcasm with a pinch of snuff; "and appearances, Bashwood, were decidedly against you."

"I don't deny it, sir. I only mentioned the circumstance because I wished to acknowledge that I was curious, and am curious about Miss Gwilt."

"Why?" asked Pedgift Senior, seeing something under the surface in Mr. Bashwood's face and manner, but utterly in the dark thus far as to what that something might be.

There was silence for a moment. The moment passed, Mr. Bashwood took the refuge usually taken by nervous, unready men, placed in his circumstances, when they are at a loss for an answer. He simply reiterated the assertion that he had just made. "I feel some curiosity sir," he said, with a strange mixture of doggedness and timidity, "about Miss Gwilt."

There was another moment of silence. In spite of his practiced acuteness and knowledge of the world, the lawyer was more puzzled than ever. The case of Mr. Bashwood presented the one human riddle of all others which he was least qualified to solve. Though year after year witnesses in thousands and thousands of cases, the remorseless disinheriting of nearest and dearest relations, the unnatural breaking-up of sacred family ties, the deplorable severance of old and firm friendships, due entirely to the intense self-absorption which the sexual passion can produce when it enters the heart of an old man, the association of love with infirmity and gray hairs arouses, nevertheless, all the world over, no other idea than the idea of extravagant improbability or extravagant absurdity in the general mind. If the interview now taking place in Mr. Pedgift's consulting-room had taken place at his dinner-table instead, when wine had opened his mind to humorous influences, it is possible that he might, by this time, have suspected the truth. But, in his business hours, Pedgift Senior was in the habit of investigating men's motives seriously from the business point of view; and he was on that very account simply incapable of conceiving any improbability so startling, any absurdity so enormous, as the absurdity and improbability of Mr. Bashwood's being in love.

Some men in the lawyer's position would have tried to force their way to enlightenment by obstinately repeating the unanswered question. Pedgift Senior wisely postponed the question until he had moved the conversation on another step. "Well," he resumed, "let us say you feel a curiosity about Miss Gwilt. What next?"

The palms of Mr. Bashwood's hands began to moisten under the influence of his agitation, as they had moistened in the past days when he had told the story of his domestic sorrows to Midwinter at the great house. Once more he rolled his handkerchief into a ball, and dabbed it softly to and fro from one hand to the other.

"May I ask if I am right, sir," he began, "in believing that you have a very unfavorable opinion of Miss Gwilt? You are quite convinced, I think—"

"My good fellow," interrupted Pedgift Senior, "why need you be in any doubt about it? You were under Mr. Armadale's open window all the while I was talking to him; and your ears, I presume, were not absolutely shut."

Mr. Bashwood showed no sense of the interruption. The little sting of the lawyer's sarcasm was lost in the nobler pain that wrung him from the wound inflicted by Miss Gwilt.

"You are quite convinced, I think, sir," he resumed, "that there are circumstances in this lady's past life which would be highly discreditable to her if they were discovered at the present time?"

"The window was open at the great house, Bashwood; and your ears, I presume, were not absolutely shut."

Still impenetrable to the sting, Mr. Bashwood persisted more obstinately than ever.

"Unless I am greatly mistaken," he said, "your long experience in such things has even suggested to you, sir, that Miss Gwilt might turn out to be known to the police?"

Pedgift Senior's patience gave way. "You have been over ten minutes in this room," he broke out. "Can you, or can you not, tell me in plain English what you want?"

In plain English—with the passion that had transformed him, the passion which (in Miss Gwilt's own words) had made a man of him, burning in his haggard cheeks—Mr. Bashwood met the challenge, and faced the lawyer (as, the worried sheep faces the dog) on his own ground.

"I wish to say, sir," he answered, "that your opinion in this matter is my opinion too. I believe there is something wrong in Miss Gwilt's past life which she keeps concealed from everybody, and I want to be the man who knows it."

Pedgift Senior saw his chance, and instantly reverted to the question that he had postponed. "Why?" he asked for the second time.

For the second time Mr. Bashwood hesitated.

Could he acknowledge that he had been mad enough to love her, and mean enough to be a spy for her? Could he say, She has deceived me from the first, and she has deserted me, now her object is served. After robbing me of my happiness, robbing me of my honor, robbing me of my last hope left in life, she has gone from me forever, and left me nothing but my old man's longing, slow and sly, and strong and changeless, for revenge. Revenge that I may have, if I can poison her success by dragging her frailties into the public view. Revenge that I will buy (for what is gold or what is life to me?) with the last farthing of my hoarded money and the last drop of my stagnant blood. Could he say that to the man who sat waiting for his answer? No; he could only crush it down and be silent.

The lawyer's expression began to harden once more.

"One of us must speak out," he said; "and as you evidently won't, I will. I can only account for this extraordinary anxiety of yours to make yourself acquainted with Miss Gwilt's secrets, in one of two ways. Your motive is either an excessively mean one (no offense, Bashwood, I am only putting the case), or an excessively generous one. After my experience of your honest character and your creditable conduct, it is only your due that I should absolve you at once of the mean motive. I believe you are as incapable as I am—I can say no more—of turning to mercenary account any discoveries you might make to Miss Gwilt's prejudice in Miss Gwilt's past life. Shall I go on any further? or would you prefer, on second thoughts, opening your mind frankly to me of your own accord?"

"I should prefer not interrupting you, sir," said Mr. Bashwood.

"As you please," pursued Pedgift Senior. "Having absolved you of the mean motive, I come to the generous motive next. It is possible that you are an unusually grateful man; and it is certain that Mr. Armadale has been remarkably kind to you. After employing you under Mr. Midwinter, in the steward's office, he has had confidence enough in your honesty and your capacity, now his friend has left him, to put his business entirely and unreservedly in your hands. It's not in my experience of human nature—but it may be possible, nevertheless—-that you are so gratefully sensible of that confidence, and so gratefully interested in your employer's welfare, that you can't see him, in his friendless position, going straight to his own disgrace and ruin, without making an effort to save him. To put it in two words. Is it your idea that Mr. Armadale might be prevented from marrying Miss Gwilt, if he could be informed in time of her real character? And do you wish to be the man who opens his eyes to the truth? If that is the case—"

He stopped in astonishment. Acting under some uncontrollable impulse, Mr. Bashwood had started to his feet. He stood, with his withered face lit up by a sudden irradiation from within, which made him look younger than his age by a good twenty years—he stood, gasping for breath enough to speak, and gesticulated entreatingly at the lawyer with both hands.

"Say it again, sir!" he burst out, eagerly, recovering his breath before Pedgift Senior had recovered his surprise. "The question about Mr. Armadale, sir!—only once more!—only once more, Mr. Pedgift, please!"

With his practiced observation closely and distrustfully at work on Mr. Bashwood' s face, Pedgift Senior motioned to him to sit down again, and put the question for the second time.

"Do I think," said Mr. Bashwood, repeating the sense, but not the words of the question, "that Mr. Armadale might be parted from Miss Gwilt, if she could be shown to him as she really is? Yes, sir! And do I wish to be the man who does it? Yes, sir! yes, sir!! yes, sir!!!"

"It's rather strange," remarked the lawyer, looking at him more and more distrustfully, "that you should be so violently agitated, simply because my question happens to have hit the mark."

The question happened to have hit a mark which Pedgift little dreamed of. It had released Mr. Bashwood's mind in an instant from the dead pressure of his one dominant idea of revenge, and had shown him a purpose to be achieved by the discovery of Miss Gwilt's secrets which had never occurred to him till that moment. The marriage which he had blindly regarded as inevitable was a marriage that might be stopped—not in Allan's interests, but in his own—and the woman whom he believed that he had lost might yet, in spite of circumstances, be a woman won! His brain whirled as he thought of it. His own roused resolution almost daunted him, by its terrible incongruity with all the familiar habits of his mind, and all the customary proceedings of his life.

Finding his last remark unanswered, Pedgift Senior considered a little before he said anything more.

"One thing is clear," reasoned the lawyer with himself. "His true motive in this matter is a motive which he is afraid to avow. My question evidently offered him a chance of misleading me, and he has accepted it on the spot. That's enough for me. If I was Mr. Armadale's lawyer, the mystery might be worth investigating. As things are, it's no interest of mine to hunt Mr. Bashwood from one lie to another till I run him to earth at last. I have nothing whatever to do with it; and I shall leave him free to follow his own roundabout courses, in his own roundabout way." Having arrived at that conclusion, Pedgift Senior pushed back his chair, and rose briskly to terminate the interview.

"Don't be alarmed, Bashwood," he began. "The subject of our conversation is a subject exhausted, so far as I am concerned. I have only a few last words to say, and it's a habit of mine, as you know, to say my last words on my legs. Whatever else I may be in the dark about, I have made one discovery, at any rate. I have found out what you really want with me—at last! You want me to help you."

"If you would be so very, very kind, sir!" stammered Mr. Bashwood. "If you would only give me the great advantage of your opinion and advice."

"Wait a bit, Bashwood We will separate those two things, if you please. A lawyer may offer an opinion like any other man; but when a lawyer gives his advice—by the Lord Harry, sir, it's Professional! You're welcome to my opinion in this matter; I have disguised it from nobody. I believe there have been events in Miss Gwilt's career which (if they could be discovered) would even make Mr. Armadale, infatuated as he is, afraid to marry her—supposing, of course, that he really is going to marry her; for, though the appearances are in favor of it so far, it is only an assumption, after all. As to the mode of proceeding by which the blots on this woman's character might or might not be brought to light in time—she may be married by license in a fortnight if she likes—that is a branch of the question on which I positively decline to enter. It implies speaking in my character as a lawyer, and giving you, what I decline positively to give you, my professional advice."

"Oh, sir, don't say that!" pleaded Mr. Bashwood. "Don't deny me the great favor, the inestimable advantage of your advice! I have such a poor head, Mr. Pedgift! I am so old and so slow, sir, and I get so sadly startled and worried when I'm thrown out of my ordinary ways. It's quite natural you should be a little impatient with me for taking up your time—I know that time is money, to a clever man like you. Would you excuse me—would you please excuse me, if I venture to say that I have saved a little something, a few pounds, sir; and being quite lonely, with nobody dependent on me, I'm sure I may spend my savings as I please?" Blind to every consideration but the one consideration of propitiating Mr. Pedgift, he took out a dingy, ragged old pocket-book, and tried, with trembling fingers, to open it on the lawyer's table.

"Put your pocket-book back directly," said Pedgift Senior. "Richer men than you have tried that argument with me, and have found that there is such a thing (off the stage) as a lawyer who is not to be bribed. I will have nothing to do with the case, under existing circumstances. If you want to know why, I beg to inform you that Miss Gwilt ceased to be professionally interesting to me on the day when I ceased to be Mr. Armadale's lawyer. I may have other reasons besides, which I don't think it necessary to mention. The reason already given is explicit enough. Go your own way, and take your responsibility on your own shoulders. You may venture within reach of Miss Gwilt's claws and come out again without being scratched. Time will show. In the meanwhile, I wish you good-morning—and I own, to my shame, that I never knew till today what a hero you were."

This time, Mr. Bashwood felt the sting. Without another word of expostulation or entreaty, without even saying "Good-morning" on his side, he walked to the door, opened it, softly, and left the room.

The parting look in his face, and the sudden silence that had fallen on him, were not lost on Pedgift Senior. "Bashwood will end badly," said the lawyer, shuffling his papers, and returning impenetrably to his interrupted work.

The change in Mr. Bashwood's face and manner to something dogged and self-contained was so startlingly uncharacteristic of him, that it even forced itself on the notice of Pedgift Junior and the clerks as he passed through the outer office. Accustomed to make the old man their butt, they took a boisterously comic view of the marked alteration in him. Deaf to the merciless raillery with which he was assailed on all sides, he stopped opposite young Pedgift, and, looking him attentively in the face, said, in a quiet, absent manner, like a man thinking aloud, "I wonder whether you would help me?"

"Open an account instantly," said Pedgift Junior to the clerks, "in the name of Mr. Bashwood. Place a chair for Mr. Bashwood, with a footstool close by, in case he wants it. Supply me with a quire of extra double-wove satin paper, and a gross of picked quills, to take notes of Mr. Bashwood's case; and inform my father instantly that I am going to leave him and set up in business for myself, on the strength of Mr. Bashwood's patronage. Take a seat, sir, pray take a seat, and express your feelings freely."

Still impenetrably deaf to the raillery of which he was the object, Mr. Bashwood waited until Pedgift Junior had exhausted himself, and then turned quietly away.

"I ought to have known better," he said, in the same absent manner as before. "He is his father's son all over—he would make game of me on my death-bed." He paused a moment at the door, mechanically brushing his hat with his hand, and went out into the street.

The bright sunshine dazzled his eyes, the passing vehicles and foot-passengers startled and bewildered him. He shrank into a by-street, and put his hand over his eyes. "I'd better go home," he thought, "and shut myself up, and think about it in my own room."

His lodging was in a small house, in the poor quarter of the town. He let himself in with his key, and stole softly upstairs. The one little room he possessed met him cruelly, look round it where he might, with silent memorials of Miss Gwilt. On the chimney-piece were the flowers she had given him at various times, all withered long since, and all preserved on a little china pedestal, protected by a glass shade. On the wall hung a wretched colored print of a woman, which he had caused to be nicely framed and glazed, because there was a look in it that reminded him of her face. In his clumsy old mahogany writing-desk were the few letters, brief and peremptory, which she had written to him at the time when he was watching and listening meanly at Thorpe Ambrose to please her. And when, turning his back on these, he sat down wearily on his sofa-bedstead—there, hanging over one end of it, was the gaudy cravat of blue satin, which he had bought because she had told him she liked bright colors, and which he had never yet had the courage to wear, though he had taken it out morning after morning with the resolution to put it on! Habitually quiet in his actions, habitually restrained in his language, he now seized the cravat as if it was a living thing that could feel, and flung it to the other end of the room with an oath.

The time passed; and still, though his resolution to stand between Miss Gwilt and her marriage remained unbroken, he was as far as ever from discovering the means which might lead him to his end. The more he thought and thought of it, the darker and the darker his course in the future looked to him.

He rose again, as wearily as he had sat down, and went to his cupboard. "I'm feverish and thirsty," he said; "a cup of tea may help me." He opened his canister, and measured out his small allowance of tea, less carefully than usual. "Even my own hands won't serve me to-day!" he thought, as he scraped together the few grains of tea that he had spilled, and put them carefully back in the canister.

In that fine summer weather, the one fire in the house was the kitchen fire. He went downstairs for the boiling water, with his teapot in his hand.

Nobody but the landlady was in the kitchen. She was one of the many English matrons whose path through this world is a path of thorns; and who take a dismal pleasure, whenever the opportunity is afforded them, in inspecting the scratched and bleeding feet of other people in a like condition with themselves. Her one vice was of the lighter sort—the vice of curiosity; and among the many counterbalancing virtues she possessed was the virtue of greatly respecting Mr. Bashwood, as a lodger whose rent was regularly paid, and whose ways were always quiet and civil from one year's end to another.

"What did you please to want, sir?" asked the landlady. "Boiling water, is it? Did you ever know the water boil, Mr. Bashwood, when you wanted it? Did you ever see a sulkier fire than that? I'll put a stick or two in, if you'll wait a little, and give me the chance. Dear, dear me, you'll excuse my mentioning it, sir, but how poorly you do look to-day!"

The strain on Mr. Bashwood's mind was beginning to tell. Something of the helplessness which he had shown at the station appeared again in his face and manner as he put his teapot on the kitchen table and sat down.

"I'm in trouble, ma'am," he said, quietly; "and I find trouble gets harder to bear than it used to be."

"Ah, you may well say that!" groaned the landlady. "I'm ready for the undertaker, Mr. Bashwood, when my time comes, whatever you may be. You're too lonely, sir. When you're in trouble, it's some help—though not much—to shift a share of it off on another person's shoulders. If your good lady had only been alive now, sir, what a comfort you would have found her, wouldn't you?"

A momentary spasm of pain passed across Mr. Bashwood's face. The landlady had ignorantly recalled him to the misfortunes of his married life. He had been long since forced to quiet her curiosity about his family affairs by telling her that he was a widower, and that his domestic circumstances had not been happy ones; but he had taken her no further into his confidence than this. The sad story which he had related to Midwinter, of his drunken wife who had ended her miserable life in a lunatic asylum, was a story which he had shrunk from confiding to the talkative woman, who would have confided it in her turn to every one else in the house.

"What I always say to my husband when he's low, sir," pursued the landlady, intent on the kettle, "is, 'What would you do now, Sam, without me?' When his temper don't get the better of him (it will boil directly, Mr. Bashwood), he says, 'Elizabeth, I could do nothing.' When his temper does get the better of him, he says, 'I should try the public-house, missus; and I'll try it now.' Ah, I've got my troubles! A man with grown-up sons and daughters tippling in a public-house! I don't call to mind, Mr. Bashwood, whether you ever had any sons and daughters? And yet, now I think of it, I seem to fancy you said yes, you had. Daughters, sir, weren't they? and, ah, dear! dear! to be sure! all dead."

"I had one daughter, ma'am," said Mr. Bashwood, patiently—"only one, who died before she was a year old."

"Only one!" repeated the sympathizing landlady. "It's as near boiling as it ever will be, sir; give me the tea-pot. Only one! Ah, it comes heavier (don't it?) when it's an only child? You said it was an only child, I think, didn't you, sir?"

For a moment, Mr. Bashwood looked at the woman with vacant eyes, and without attempting to answer her. After ignorantly recalling the memory of the wife who had disgraced him, she was now, as ignorantly, forcing him back on the miserable remembrance of the son who had ruined and deserted him. For the first time, since he had told his story to Midwinter, at their introductory interview in the great house, his mind reverted once more to the bitter disappointment and disaster of the past. Again he thought of the bygone days, when he had become security for his son, and when that son's dishonesty had forced him to sell everything he possessed to pay the forfeit that was exacted when the forfeit was due. "I have a son, ma'am," he said, becoming conscious that the landlady was looking at him in mute and melancholy surprise. "I did my best to help him forward in the world, and he has behaved very badly to me."

"Did he, now?" rejoined the landlady, with an appearance of the greatest interest. "Behaved badly to you—almost broke your heart, didn't he? Ah, it will come home to him, sooner or later. Don't you fear! 'Honor your father and mother,' wasn't put on Moses's tables of stone for nothing, Mr. Bashwood. Where may he be, and what is he doing now, sir?"

The question was in effect almost the same as the question which Midwinter had put when the circumstances had been described to him. As Mr. Bashwood had answered it on the former occasion, so (in nearly the same words) he answered it now.

"My son is in London, ma'am, for all I know to the contrary. He was employed, when I last heard of him, in no very creditable way, at the Private Inquiry Office—"

At those words he suddenly checked himself. His face flushed, his eyes brightened; he pushed away the cup which had just been filled for him, and rose from his seat. The landlady started back a step. There was something in her lodger's face that she had never seen in it before.

"I hope I've not offended you, sir," said the woman, recovering her self-possession, and looking a little too ready to take offense on her side, at a moment's notice.

"Far from it, ma'am, far from it!" he rejoined, in a strangely eager, hurried way. "I have just remembered something—something very important. I must go upstairs—it's a letter, a letter, a letter. I'll come back to my tea, ma'am. I beg your pardon, I'm much obliged to you, you've been very kind—I'll say good-by, if you'll allow me, for the present." To the landlady's amazement, he cordially shook hands with her, and made for the door, leaving tea and tea-pot to take care of themselves.

The moment he reached his own room, he locked himself in. For a little while he stood holding by the chimney-piece, waiting to recover his breath. The moment he could move again, he opened his writing-desk on the table. "That for you, Mr. Pedgift and Son!" he said, with a snap of his fingers as he sat down. "I've got a son too!"

There was a knock at the door—a knock, soft, considerate, and confidential. The anxious landlady wished to know whether Mr. Bashwood was ill, and begged to intimate for the second time that she earnestly trusted she had given him no offense.

"No! no!" he called through the door. "I'm quite well—I'm writing, ma'am, I'm writing—please to excuse me. She's a good woman; she's an excellent woman," he thought, when the landlady had retired. "I'll make her a little present. My mind's so unsettled, I might never have thought of it but for her. Oh, if my boy is at the office still! Oh, if I can only write a letter that will make him pity me!"

He took up his pen, and sat thinking anxiously, thinking long, before he touched the paper. Slowly, with many patient pauses to think and think again, and with more than ordinary care to make his writing legible, he traced these lines:

"MY DEAR JAMES—You will be surprised, I am afraid, to see my handwriting. Pray don't suppose I am going to ask you for money, or to reproach you for having sold me out of house and home when you forfeited your security, and I had to pay. I am willing and anxious to let by-gones be by-gones, and to forget the past.

"It is in your power (if you are still at the Private Inquiry Office) to do me a great service. I am in sore anxiety and trouble on the subject of a person in whom I am interested. The person is a lady. Please don't make game of me for confessing this, if you can help it. If you knew what I am now suffering, I think you would be more inclined to pity than to make game of me.

"I would enter into particulars, only I know your quick temper, and I fear exhausting your patience. Perhaps it may be enough to say that I have reason to believe the lady's past life has not been a very creditable one, and that I am interested—more interested than words can tell—in finding out what her life has really been, and in making the discovery within a fortnight from the present time.

"Though I know very little about the ways of business in an office like yours, I can understand that, without first having the lady's present address, nothing can be done to help me. Unfortunately, I am not yet acquainted with her present address. I only know that she went to town to-day, accompanied by a gentleman, in whose employment I now am, and who (as I believe) will be likely to write to me for money before many days more are over his head.

"Is this circumstance of a nature to help us? I venture to say 'us,' because I count already, my dear boy, on your kind assistance and advice. Don't let money stand between us; I have saved a little something, and it is all freely at your disposal. Pray, pray write to me by return of post! If you will only try your best to end the dreadful suspense under which I am now suffering, you will atone for all the grief and disappointment you caused me in times that are past, and you will confer an obligation that he will never forget on

"Your affectionate father,

"FELIX BASHWOOD."

After waiting a little, to dry his eyes, Mr. Bashwood added the date and address, and directed the letter to his son, at "The Private Inquiry Office, Shadyside Place, London." That done, he went out at once, and posted his letter with his own hands. It was then Monday; and, if the answer was sent by return of post, the answer would be received on Wednesday morning.

The interval day, the Tuesday, was passed by Mr. Bashwood in the steward's office at the great house. He had a double motive for absorbing himself as deeply as might be in the various occupations connected with the management of the estate. In the first place, employment helped him to control the devouring impatience with which he looked for the coming of the next day. In the second place, the more forward he was with the business of the office, the more free he would be to join his son in London, without attracting suspicion to himself by openly neglecting the interests placed under his charge.

Toward the Tuesday afternoon, vague rumors of something wrong at the cottage found their way (through Major Milroy's servants) to the servants at the great house, and attempted ineffectually through this latter channel to engage the attention of Mr. Bashwood, impenetrably fixed on other things. The major and Miss Neelie had been shut up together in mysterious conference; and Miss Neelie's appearance after the close of the interview plainly showed that she had been crying. This had happened on the Monday afternoon; and on the next day (that present Tuesday) the major had startled the household by announcing briefly that his daughter wanted a change to the air of the seaside, and that he proposed taking her himself, by the next train, to Lowestoft. The two had gone away together, both very serious and silent, but both, apparently, very good friends, for all that. Opinions at the great house attributed this domestic revolution to the reports current on the subject of Allan and Miss Gwilt. Opinions at the cottage rejected that solution of the difficulty, on practical grounds. Miss Neelie had remained inaccessibly shut up in her own room, from the Monday afternoon to the Tuesday morning when her father took her away. The major, during the same interval, had not been outside the door, and had spoken to nobody And Mrs. Milroy, at the first attempt of her new attendant to inform her of the prevailing scandal in the town, had sealed the servant's lips by flying into one of her terrible passions the instant Miss Gwilt's name was mentioned. Something must have happened, of course, to take Major Milroy and his daughter so suddenly from home; but that something was certainly not Mr. Armadale's scandalous elopement, in broad daylight, with Miss Gwilt.

The afternoon passed, and the evening passed, and no other event happened but the purely private and personal event which had taken place at the cottage. Nothing occurred (for nothing in the nature of things could occur) to dissipate the delusion on which Miss Gwilt had counted—the delusion which all Thorpe Ambrose now shared with Mr. Bashwood, that she had gone privately to London with Allan in the character of Allan's future wife.

On the Wednesday morning, the postman, entering the street in which Mr. Bashwood lived, was encountered by Mr. Bashwood himself, so eager to know if there was a letter for him that he had come out without his hat. There was a letter for him—the letter that he longed for from his vagabond son.

These were the terms in which Bashwood the younger answered his father's supplication for help—after having previously ruined his father's prospects for life:

"Shadyside Place. Tuesday, July 29th.

"MY DEAR DAD—We have some little practice in dealing with mysteries at this office; but the mystery of your letter beats me altogether. Are you speculating on the interesting hidden frailties of some charming woman? Or, after your experience of matrimony, are you actually going to give me a stepmother at this time of day? Whichever it is, upon my life your letter interests me.

"I am not joking, mind—though the temptation is not an easy one to resist. On the contrary, I have given you a quarter of an hour of my valuable time already. The place you date from sounded somehow familiar to me. I referred back to the memorandum book, and found that I was sent down to Thorpe Ambrose to make private inquiries not very long since. My employer was a lively old lady, who was too sly to give us her right name and address. As a matter of course, we set to work at once, and found out who she was. Her name is Mrs. Oldershaw; and, if you think of her for my stepmother, I strongly recommend you to think again before you make her Mrs. Bashwood.

"If it is not Mrs. Oldershaw, then all I can do, so far, is to tell you how you may find out the unknown lady's address. Come to town yourself as soon as you get the letter you expect from the gentleman who has gone away with her (I hope he is not a handsome young man, for your sake) and call here. I will send somebody to help you in watching his hotel or lodgings; and if he communicates with the lady, or the lady with him, you may consider her address discovered from that moment. Once let me identify her, and know where she is, and you shall see all her charming little secrets as plainly as you see the paper on which your affectionate son is now writing to you.

"A word more about the terms. I am as willing as you are to be friends again; but, though I own you were out of pocket by me once, I can't afford to be out of pocket by you. It must be understood that you are answerable for all the expenses of the inquiry. We may have to employ some of the women attached to this office, if your lady is too wideawake or too nice-looking to be dealt with by a man. There will be cab hire, and postage-stamps—admissions to public amusements, if she is inclined that way—shillings for pew-openers, if she is serious, and takes our people into churches to hear popular preachers, and so on. My own professional services you shall have gratis; but I can't lose by you as well. Only remember that, and you shall have your way. By-gones shall be by-gones, and we will forget the past.

"Your affectionate son,

"JAMES BASHWOOD."

In the ecstasy of seeing help placed at last within his reach, the father put his son's atrocious letter to his lips. "My good boy!" he murmured, tenderly—"my dear, good boy!"

He put the letter down, and fell into a new train of thought. The next question to face was the serious question of time. Mr. Pedgift had told him Miss Gwilt might be married in a fortnight. One day of the fourteen had passed already, and another was passing. He beat his hand impatiently on the table at his side, wondering how soon the want of money would force Allan to write to him from London. "To-morrow?" he asked himself. "Or next day?"

The morrow passed, and nothing happened. The next day came, and the letter arrived! It was on business, as he had anticipated; it asked for money, as he had anticipated; and there, at the end of it, in a postscript, was the address added, concluding with the words, "You may count on my staying here till further notice."

He gave one deep gasp of relief, and instantly busied himself—though there were nearly two hours to spare before the train started for London—in packing his bag. The last thing he put in was his blue satin cravat. "She likes bright colors," he said, "and she may see me in it yet!"



XIV. MISS GWILT'S DIARY.

"All Saints' Terrace, New Road, London, July 28th, Monday night.—I can hardly hold my head up, I am so tired. But in my situation, I dare not trust anything to memory. Before I go to bed, I must write my customary record of the events of the day.

"So far, the turn of luck in my favor (it was long enough before it took the turn!) seems likely to continue. I succeeded in forcing Armadale—the brute required nothing short of forcing!—to leave Thorpe Ambrose for London, alone in the same carriage with me, before all the people in the station. There was a full attendance of dealers in small scandal, all staring hard at us, and all evidently drawing their own conclusions. Either I knew nothing of Thorpe Ambrose—or the town gossip is busy enough by this time with Mr. Armadale and Miss Gwilt.

"I had some difficulty with him for the first half-hour after we left the station. The guard (delightful man! I felt so grateful to him!) had shut us up together, in expectation of half a crown at the end of the journey. Armadale was suspicious of me, and he showed it plainly. Little by little I tamed my wild beast—partly by taking care to display no curiosity about his journey to town, and partly by interesting him on the subject of his friend Midwinter; dwelling especially on the opportunity that now offered itself for a reconciliation between them. I kept harping on this string till I set his tongue going, and made him amuse me as a gentleman is bound to do when he has the honor of escorting a lady on a long railway journey.

"What little mind he has was full, of course, of his own affairs and Miss Milroy's. No words can express the clumsiness he showed in trying to talk about himself, without taking me into his confidence or mentioning Miss Milroy's name.

"He was going to London, he gravely informed me, on a matter of indescribable interest to him. It was a secret for the present, but he hoped to tell it me soon; it had made a great difference already in the way in which he looked at the slanders spoken of him in Thorpe Ambrose; he was too happy to care what the scandal-mongers said of him now, and he should soon stop their mouths by appearing in a new character that would surprise them all. So he blundered on, with the firm persuasion that he was keeping me quite in the dark. It was hard not to laugh, when I thought of my anonymous letter on its way to the major; but I managed to control myself—though, I must own, with some difficulty. As the time wore on, I began to feel a terrible excitement; the position was, I think, a little too much for me. There I was, alone with him, talking in the most innocent, easy, familiar manner, and having it in my mind all the time to brush his life out of my way, when the moment comes, as I might brush a stain off my gown. It made my blood leap, and my cheeks flush. I caught myself laughing once or twice much louder than I ought; and long before we got to London I thought it desirable to put my face in hiding by pulling down my veil.

"There was no difficulty, on reaching the terminus, in getting him to come in the cab with me to the hotel where Midwinter is staying. He was all eagerness to be reconciled with his dear friend—principally, I have no doubt, because he wants the dear friend to lend a helping hand to the elopement. The real difficulty lay, of course, with Midwinter. My sudden journey to London had allowed me no opportunity of writing to combat his superstitious conviction that he and his former friend are better apart. I thought it wise to leave Armadale in the cab at the door, and to go into the hotel by myself to pave the way for him.

"Fortunately, Midwinter had not gone out. His delight at seeing me some days sooner than he had hoped had something infectious in it, I suppose. Pooh! I may own the truth to my own diary! There was a moment when I forgot everything in the world but our two selves as completely as he did. I felt as if I was back in my teens—until I remembered the lout in the cab at the door. And then I was five-and-thirty again in an instant.

"His face altered when he heard who was below, and what it was I wanted of him; he looked not angry, but distressed. He yielded, however, before long, not to my reasons, for I gave him none, but to my entreaties. His old fondness for his friend might possibly have had some share in persuading him against his will; but my own opinion is that he acted entirely under the influence of his fondness for Me.

"I waited in the sitting-room while he went down to the door; so I knew nothing of what passed between them when they first saw each other again. But oh, the difference between the two men when the interval had passed, and they came upstairs together and joined me.

"They were both agitated, but in such different ways! The hateful Armadale, so loud and red and clumsy; the dear, lovable Midwinter, so pale and quiet, with such a gentleness in his voice when he spoke, and such tenderness in his eyes every time they turned my way. Armadale overlooked me as completely as if I had not been in the room. He referred to me over and over again in the conversation; he constantly looked at me to see what I thought, while I sat in my corner silently watching them; he wanted to go with me and see me safe to my lodgings, and spare me all trouble with the cabman and the luggage. When I thanked him and declined, Armadale looked unaffectedly relieved at the prospect of seeing my back turned, and of having his friend all to himself. I left him, with his awkward elbows half over the table, scrawling a letter (no doubt to Miss Milroy), and shouting to the waiter that he wanted a bed at the hotel. I had calculated on his staying, as a matter of course, where he found his friend staying. It was pleasant to find my anticipations realized, and to know that I have as good as got him now under my own eye.

"After promising to let Midwinter know where he could see me to-morrow, I went away in the cab to hunt for lodgings by myself.

"With some difficulty I have succeeded in getting an endurable sitting-room and bedroom in this house, where the people are perfect strangers to me. Having paid a week's rent in advance (for I naturally preferred dispensing with a reference), I find myself with exactly three shillings and ninepence left in my purse. It is impossible to ask Midwinter for money, after he has already paid Mrs. Oldershaw's note of hand. I must borrow something to-morrow on my watch and chain at the pawnbroker's. Enough to keep me going for a fortnight is all, and more than all, that I want. In that time, or in less than that time, Midwinter will have married me."

"July 29th.—Two o'clock.—Early in the morning I sent a line to Midwinter, telling him that he would find me here at three this afternoon. That done, I devoted the morning to two errands of my own. One is hardly worth mentioning—it was only to raise money on my watch and chain. I got more than I expected; and more (even supposing I buy myself one or two little things in the way of cheap summer dress) than I am at all likely to spend before the wedding-day.

"The other errand was of a far more serious kind. It led me into an attorney's office.

"I was well aware last night (though I was too weary to put it down in my diary), that I could not possibly see Midwinter this morning—in the position he now occupies toward me—without at least appearing to take him into my confidence on the subject of myself and my circumstances. Excepting one necessary consideration which I must be careful not to overlook. There is not the least difficulty in my drawing on my invention, and telling him any story I please—for thus far I have told no story to anybody. Midwinter went away to London before it was possible to approach the subject. As to the Milroys (having provided them with the customary reference), I could fortunately keep them at arms-length on all questions relating purely to myself. And lastly, when I affected my reconciliation with Armadale on the drive in front of the house, he was fool enough to be too generous to let me defend my character. When I had expressed my regret for having lost my temper and threatened Miss Milroy, and when I had accepted his assurance that my pupil had never done or meant to do me any injury, he was too magnanimous to hear a word on the subject of my private affairs. Thus I am quite unfettered by any former assertions of my own; and I may tell any story I please—with the one drawback hinted at already in the shape of a restraint. Whatever I may invent in the way of pure fiction, I must preserve the character in which I have appeared at Thorpe Ambrose; for, with the notoriety that is attached to my other name, I have no other choice but to marry Midwinter in my maiden name as 'Miss Gwilt.'

"This was the consideration that took me into the lawyer's office. I felt that I must inform myself, before I saw Midwinter later in the day, of any awkward consequences that may follow the marriage of a widow if she conceals her widow's name.

"Knowing of no other professional person whom I could trust, I went boldly to the lawyer who had my interests in his charge, at that terrible past time in my life, which I have more reason than ever to shrink from thinking of now. He was astonished, and, as I could plainly detect, by no means pleased to see me. I had hardly opened my lips before he said he hoped I was not consulting him again (with a strong emphasis on the word) on my own account. I took the hint, and put the question I had come to ask, in the interests of that accommodating personage on such occasions—an absent friend. The lawyer evidently saw through it at once; but he was sharp enough to turn my 'friend' to good account on his side. He said he would answer the question as a matter of courtesy toward a lady represented by myself; but he must make it a condition that this consultation of him by deputy should go no further.

"I accepted his terms; for I really respected the clever manner in which he contrived to keep me at arms-length without violating the laws of good-breeding. In two minutes I heard what he had to say, mastered it in my own mind, and went out.

"Short as it was, the consultation told me everything I wanted to know. I risk nothing by marrying Midwinter in my maiden instead of my widow's name. The marriage is a good marriage in this way: that it can only be set aside if my husband finds out the imposture, and takes proceedings to invalidate our marriage in my lifetime. That is the lawyer's answer in the lawyer's own words. It relieves me at once—in this direction, at any rate—of all apprehension about the future. The only imposture my husband will ever discover—and then only if he happens to be on the spot—is the imposture that puts me in the place, and gives me the income, of Armadale's widow; and by that time I shall have invalidated my own marriage forever.

"Half-past two! Midwinter will be here in half an hour. I must go and ask my glass how I look. I must rouse my invention, and make up my little domestic romance. Am I feeling nervous about it? Something flutters in the place where my heart used to be. At five-and-thirty, too! and after such a life as mine!"

Six o'clock.—He has just gone. The day for our marriage is a day determined on already.

"I have tried to rest and recover myself. I can't rest. I have come back to these leaves. There is much to be written in them since Midwinter has been here, that concerns me nearly.

"Let me begin with what I hate most to remember, and so be the sooner done with it—let me begin with the paltry string of falsehoods which I told him about my family troubles.

"What can be the secret of this man's hold on me? How is it that he alters me so that I hardly know myself again? I was like myself in the railway carriage yesterday with Armadale. It was surely frightful to be talking to the living man, through the whole of that long journey, with the knowledge in me all the while that I meant to be his widow—and yet I was only excited and fevered. Hour after hour I never shrunk once from speaking to Armadale; but the first trumpery falsehood I told Midwinter turned me cold when I saw that he believed it! I felt a dreadful hysterical choking in the throat when he entreated me not to reveal my troubles. And once—I am horrified when I think of it—once, when he said, 'If I could love you more dearly, I should love you more dearly now,' I was within a hair-breadth of turning traitor to myself. I was on the very point of crying out to him, 'Lies! all lies! I'm a fiend in human shape! Marry the wretchedest creature that prowls the streets, and you will marry a better woman than me!' Yes! the seeing his eyes moisten, the hearing his voice tremble, while I was deceiving him, shook me in that way. I have seen handsomer men by hundreds, cleverer men by dozens. What can this man have roused in me? Is it Love? I thought I had loved, never to love again. Does a woman not love when the man's hardness to her drives her to drown herself? A man drove me to that last despair in days gone by. Did all my misery at that time come from something which was not Love? Have I lived to be five-and-thirty, and am I only feeling now what Love really is?—now, when it is too late? Ridiculous! Besides, what is the use of asking? What do I know about it? What does any woman ever know? The more we think of it, the more we deceive ourselves. I wish I had been born an animal. My beauty might have been of some use to me then—it might have got me a good master.

"Here is a whole page of my diary filled; and nothing written yet that is of the slightest use to me! My miserable made-up story must be told over again here, while the incidents are fresh in my memory—or how am I to refer to it consistently on after-occasions when I may be obliged to speak of it again?

"There was nothing new in what I told him; it was the commonplace rubbish of the circulating libraries. A dead father; a lost fortune; vagabond brothers, whom I dread ever seeing again; a bedridden mother dependent on my exertions—No! I can't write it down! I hate myself, I despise myself, when I remember that he believed it because I said it—that he was distressed by it because it was my story! I will face the chances of contradicting myself—I will risk discovery and ruin—anything rather than dwell on that contemptible deception of him a moment longer.

"My lies came to an end at last. And then he talked to me of himself and of his prospects. Oh, what a relief it was to turn to that at the time! What a relief it is to come to it now!

"He has accepted the offer about which he wrote to me at Thorpe Ambrose; and he is now engaged as occasional foreign correspondent to the new newspaper. His first destination is Naples. I wish it had been some other place, for I have certain past associations with Naples which I am not at all anxious to renew. It has been arranged that he is to leave England not later than the eleventh of next month. By that time, therefore, I, who am to go with him, must go with him as his wife.

"There is not the slightest difficulty about the marriage. All this part of it is so easy that I begin to dread an accident.

"The proposal to keep the thing strictly private—which it might have embarrassed me to make—comes from Midwinter. Marrying me in his own name—the name that he has kept concealed from every living creature but myself and Mr. Brock—it is his interest that not a soul who knows him should be present at the ceremony; his friend Armadale least of all. He has been a week in London already. When another week has passed, he proposes to get the License, and to be married in the church belonging to the parish in which the hotel is situated. These are the only necessary formalities. I had but to say 'Yes' (he told me), and to feel no further anxiety about the future. I said 'Yes' with such a devouring anxiety about the future that I was afraid he would see it. What minutes the next few minutes were, when he whispered delicious words to me, while I hid my face on his breast!

"I recovered myself first, and led him back to the subject of Armadale, having my own reasons for wanting to know what they said to each other after I had left them yesterday.

"The manner in which Midwinter replied showed me that he was speaking under the restraint of respecting a confidence placed in him by his friend. Long before he had done, I detected what the confidence was. Armadale had been consulting him (exactly as I anticipated) on the subject of the elopement. Although he appears to have remonstrated against taking the girl secretly away from her home, Midwinter seems to have felt some delicacy about speaking strongly, remembering (widely different as the circumstances are) that he was contemplating a private marriage himself. I gathered, at any rate, that he had produced very little effect by what he had said; and that Armadale had already carried out his absurd intention of consulting the head-clerk in the office of his London lawyers.

"Having got as far as this, Midwinter put the question which I felt must come sooner or later. He asked if I objected to our engagement being mentioned, in the strictest secrecy, to his friend.

"'I will answer,' he said, 'for Allan's respecting any confidence that I place in him. And I will undertake, when the time comes, so to use my influence over him as to prevent his being present at the marriage, and discovering (what he must never know) that my name is the same as his own. It would help me,' he went on, 'to speak more strongly about the object that has brought him to London, if I can requite the frankness with which he has spoken of his private affairs to me by the same frankness on my side.'

"I had no choice but to give the necessary permission, and I gave it. It is of the utmost importance to me to know what course Major Milroy takes with his daughter and Armadale after receiving my anonymous letter; and, unless I invite Armadale's confidence in some way, I am nearly certain to be kept in the dark. Let him once be trusted with the knowledge that I am to be Midwinter's wife, and what he tells his friend about his love affair he will tell me.

"When it had been understood between us that Armadale was to be taken into our confidence, we began to talk about ourselves again. How the time flew! What a sweet enchantment it was to forget everything in his arms! How he loves me!—ah, poor fellow, how he loves me!

"I have promised to meet him to-morrow morning in the Regent's Park. The less he is seen here the better. The people in this house are strangers to me, certainly; but it may be wise to consult appearances, as if I was still at Thorpe Ambrose, and not to produce the impression, even on their minds, that Midwinter is engaged to me. If any after-inquiries are made, when I have run my grand risk, the testimony of my London landlady might be testimony worth having.

"That wretched old Bashwood! Writing of Thorpe Ambrose reminds me of him. What will he say when the town gossip tells him that Armadale has taken me to London, in a carriage reserved for ourselves? It really is too absurd in a man of Bashwood's age and appearance to presume to be in love!...."

"July 30th.—-News at last! Armadale has heard from Miss Milroy. My anonymous letter has produced its effect. The girl is removed from Thorpe Ambrose already; and the whole project of the elopement is blown to the winds at once and forever. This was the substance of what Midwinter had to tell me when I met him in the Park. I affected to be excessively astonished, and to feel the necessary feminine longing to know all the particulars. 'Not that I expect to have my curiosity satisfied,' I added, 'for Mr. Armadale and I are little better than mere acquaintances, after all.'

"'You are far more than a mere acquaintance in Allan's eyes,' said Midwinter. 'Having your permission to trust him, I have already told him how near and dear you are to me.'

"Hearing this, I thought it desirable, before I put any questions about Miss Milroy, to attend to my own interests first, and to find out what effect the announcement of my coming marriage had produced on Armadale. It was possible that he might be still suspicious of me, and that the inquiries he made in London, at Mrs. Milroy's instigation, might be still hanging on his mind.

"'Did Mr. Armadale seem surprised,' I asked, 'when you told him of our engagement, and when you said it was to be kept a secret from everybody?'

"'He seemed greatly surprised,' said Midwinter, 'to hear that we were going to be married. All he said when I told him it must be kept a secret was that he supposed there were reasons on your side for making the marriage a private one.'

"'What did you say,' I inquired, 'when he made that remark?'

"'I said the reasons were on my side,' answered Midwinter. 'And I thought it right to add—considering that Allan had allowed himself to be misled by the ignorant distrust of you at Thorpe Ambrose—that you had confided to me the whole of your sad family story, and that you had amply justified your unwillingness; under any ordinary circumstances, to speak of your private affairs.'"

("I breathed freely again. He had said just what was wanted, just in the right way.")

"'Thank you,' I said, 'for putting me right in your friend's estimation. Does he wish to see me?' I added, by way of getting back to the other subject of Miss Milroy and the elopement.

"'He is longing to see you,' returned Midwinter. 'He is in great distress, poor fellow—distress which I have done my best to soothe, but which, I believe, would yield far more readily to a woman's sympathy than to mine.'

"'Where is he now?' I asked.

"He was at the hotel; and to the hotel I instantly proposed that we should go. It is a busy, crowded place; and (with my veil down) I have less fear of compromising myself there than at my quiet lodgings. Besides, it is vitally important to me to know what Armadale does next, under this total change of circumstances—for I must so control his proceedings as to get him away from England if I can. We took a cab: such was my eagerness to sympathize with the heart-broken lover, that we took a cab!

"Anything so ridiculous as Armadale's behavior under the double shock of discovering that his young lady has been taken away from him, and that I am to be married to Midwinter, I never before witnessed in all my experience. To say that he was like a child is a libel on all children who are not born idiots. He congratulated me on my coming marriage, and execrated the unknown wretch who had written the anonymous letter, little thinking that he was speaking of one and the same person in one and the same breath. Now he submissively acknowledged that Major Milroy had his rights as a father, and now he reviled the major as having no feeling for anything but his mechanics and his clock. At one moment he started up, with the tears in his eyes, and declared that his 'darling Neelie' was an angel on earth. At another he sat down sulkily, and thought that a girl of her spirit might have run away on the spot and joined him in London. After a good half-hour of this absurd exhibition, I succeeded in quieting him; and then a few words of tender inquiry produced what I had expressly come to the hotel to see—Miss Milroy's letter.

"It was outrageously long, and rambling, and confused; in short, the letter of a fool. I had to wade through plenty of vulgar sentiment and lamentation, and to lose time and patience over maudlin outbursts of affection, and nauseous kisses inclosed in circles of ink. However, I contrived to extract the information I wanted at last; and here it is:

"The major, on receipt of my anonymous warning, appears to have sent at once for his daughter, and to have shown her the letter. 'You know what a hard life I lead with your mother; don't make it harder still, Neelie, by deceiving me.' That was all the poor old gentleman said. I always did like the major; and, though he was afraid to show it, I know he always liked me. His appeal to his daughter (if her account of it is to be believed) cut her to the heart. She burst out crying (let her alone for crying at the right moment!) and confessed everything.

"After giving her time to recover herself (if he had given her a good box on the ears it would have been more to the purpose!), the major seems to have put certain questions, and to have become convinced (as I was convinced myself) that his daughter's heart, or fancy, or whatever she calls it, was really and truly set on Armadale. The discovery evidently distressed as well as surprised him. He appears to have hesitated, and to have maintained his own unfavorable opinion of Miss Neelie's lover for some little time. But his daughter's tears and entreaties (so like the weakness of the dear old gentleman!) shook him at last. Though he firmly refused to allow of any marriage engagement at present, he consented to overlook the clandestine meetings in the park, and to put Armadale's fitness to become his son-in-law to the test, on certain conditions.

"These conditions are, that for the next six months to come all communication is to be broken off, both personally and by writing, between Armadale and Miss Milroy. That space of time is to be occupied by the young gentleman as he himself thinks best, and by the young lady in completing her education at school. If, when the six months have passed, they are both still of the same mind, and if Armadale's conduct in the interval has been such as to improve the major's opinion of him, he will be allowed to present himself in the character of Miss Milroy's suitor, and, in six months more, if all goes well, the marriage may take place.

"I declare I could kiss the dear old major, if I was only within reach of him! If I had been at his elbow, and had dictated the conditions myself, I could have asked for nothing better than this. Six months of total separation between Armadale and Miss Milroy! In half that time—with all communication cut off between the two—it must go hard with me, indeed, if I don't find myself dressed in the necessary mourning, and publicly recognized as Armadale's widow.

"But I am forgetting the girl's letter. She gives her father's reasons for making his conditions, in her father's own words. The major seems to have spoken so sensibly and so feelingly that he left his daughter no decent alternative—and he leaves Armadale no decent alternative—but to submit. As well as I can remember, he seems to have expressed himself to Miss Neelie in these, or nearly in these terms:

"'Don't think I am behaving cruelly to you, my dear: I am merely asking you to put Mr. Armadale to the proof. It is not only right, it is absolutely necessary, that you should hold no communication with him for some time to come; and I will show you why. In the first place, if you go to school, the necessary rules in such places—necessary for the sake of the other girls—would not permit you to see Mr. Armadale or to receive letters from him; and, if you are to become mistress of Thorpe Ambrose, to school you must go, for you would be ashamed, and I should be ashamed, if you occupied the position of a lady of station without having the accomplishments which all ladies of station are expected to possess. In the second place, I want to see whether Mr. Armadale will continue to think of you as he thinks now, without being encouraged in his attachment by seeing you, or reminded of it by hearing from you. If I am wrong in thinking him flighty and unreliable, and if your opinion of him is the right one, this is not putting the young man to an unfair test—true love survives much longer separations than a separation of six months. And when that time is over, and well over; and when I have had him under my own eye for another six months, and have learned to think as highly of him as you do—even then, my dear, after all that terrible delay, you will still be a married woman before you are eighteen. Think of this, Neelie, and show that you love me and trust me, by accepting my proposal. I will hold no communication with Mr. Armadale myself. I will leave it to you to write and tell him what has been decided on. He may write back one letter, and one only, to acquaint you with his decision. After that, for the sake of your reputation, nothing more is to be said, and nothing more is to be done, and the matter is to be kept strictly private until the six months' interval is at an end.'

"To this effect the major spoke. His behavior to that little slut of a girl has produced a stronger impression on me than anything else in the letter. It has set me thinking (me, of all the people in the world!) of what they call 'a moral difficulty.' We are perpetually told that there can be no possible connection between virtue and vice. Can there not? Here is Major Milroy doing exactly what an excellent father, at once kind and prudent, affectionate and firm, would do under the circumstances; and by that very course of conduct he has now smoothed the way for me, as completely as if he had been the chosen accomplice of that abominable creature, Miss Gwilt. Only think of my reasoning in this way! But I am in such good spirits, I can do anything to-day. I have not looked so bright and so young as I look now for months past!

"To return to the letter, for the last time—it is so excessively dull and stupid that I really can't help wandering away from it into reflections of my own, as a mere relief.

"After solemnly announcing that she meant to sacrifice herself to her beloved father's wishes (the brazen assurance of her setting up for a martyr after what has happened exceeds anything I ever heard or read of!), Miss Neelie next mentioned that the major proposed taking her to the seaside for change of air, during the few days that were still to elapse before she went to school. Armadale was to send his answer by return of post, and to address her, under cover to her father, at Lowestoft. With this, and with a last outburst of tender protestation, crammed crookedly into a corner of the page, the letter ended. (N.B.—The major's object in taking her to the seaside is plain enough. He still privately distrusts Armadale, and he is wisely determined to prevent any more clandestine meetings in the park before the girl is safely disposed of at school.)

"When I had done with the letter—I had requested permission to read parts of it which I particularly admired, for the second and third time!—we all consulted together in a friendly way about what Armadale was to do.

"He was fool enough, at the outset, to protest against submitting to Major Milroy's conditions. He declared, with his odious red face looking the picture of brute health, that he should never survive a six months' separation from his beloved Neelie. Midwinter (as may easily be imagined) seemed a little ashamed of him, and joined me in bringing him to his senses. We showed him, what would have been plain enough to anybody but a booby, that there was no honorable or even decent alternative left but to follow the example of submission set by the young lady. 'Wait, and you will have her for your wife,' was what I said. 'Wait, and you will force the major to alter his unjust opinion of you,' was what Midwinter added. With two clever people hammering common sense into his head at that rate, it is needless to say that his head gave way, and he submitted.

"Having decided him to accept the major's conditions (I was careful to warn him, before he wrote to Miss Milroy, that my engagement to Midwinter was to be kept as strictly secret from her as from everybody else), the next question we had to settle related to his future proceedings. I was ready with the necessary arguments to stop him, if he had proposed returning to Thorpe Ambrose. But he proposed nothing of the sort. On the contrary, he declared, of his own accord, that nothing would induce him to go back. The place and the people were associated with everything that was hateful to him. There would be no Miss Milroy now to meet him in the park, and no Midwinter to keep him company in the solitary house. 'I'd rather break stones on the road,' was the sensible and cheerful way in which he put it, 'than go back to Thorpe Ambrose.'

"The first suggestion after this came from Midwinter. The sly old clergyman who gave Mrs. Oldershaw and me so much trouble has, it seems, been ill, but has been latterly reported better. 'Why not go to Somersetshire,' said Midwinter, 'and see your good friend, and my good friend, Mr. Brock?'

"Armadale caught at the proposal readily enough. He longed, in the first place, to see 'dear old Brock,' and he longed, in the second place, to see his yacht. After staying a few days more in London with Midwinter, he would gladly go to Somersetshire. But what after that?

"Seeing my opportunity, I came to the rescue this time. 'You have got a yacht, Mr. Armadale,' I said; 'and you know that Midwinter is going to Italy. When you are tired of Somersetshire, why not make a voyage to the Mediterranean, and meet your friend, and your friend's wife, at Naples?'

"I made the allusion to 'his friend's wife' with the most becoming modesty and confusion. Armadale was enchanted. I had hit on the best of all ways of occupying the weary time. He started up, and wrung my hand in quite an ecstasy of gratitude. How I do hate people who can only express their feelings by hurting other people's hands!

"Midwinter was as pleased with my proposal as Armadale; but he saw difficulties in the way of carrying it out. He considered the yacht too small for a cruise to the Mediterranean, and he thought it desirable to hire a larger vessel. His friend thought otherwise. I left them arguing the question. It was quite enough for me to have made sure, in the first place, that Armadale will not return to Thorpe Ambrose; and to have decided him, in the second place, on going abroad. He may go how he likes. I should prefer the small yacht myself; for there seems to be a chance that the small yacht might do me the inestimable service of drowning him...."

"Five o'clock.—The excitement of feeling that I had got Armadale's future movements completely under my own control made me so restless, when I returned to my lodgings, that I was obliged to go out again, and do something. A new interest to occupy me being what I wanted, I went to Pimlico to have it out with Mother Oldershaw.

"I walked; and made up my mind, on the way, that I would begin by quarreling with her.

"One of my notes of hand being paid already, and Midwinter being willing to pay the other two when they fall due, my present position with the old wretch is as independent a one as I could desire. I always get the better of her when it comes to a downright battle between us, and find her wonderfully civil and obliging the moment I have made her feel that mine is the strongest will of the two. In my present situation, she might be of use to me in various ways, if I could secure her assistance, without trusting her with secrets which I am now more than ever determined to keep to myself. That was my idea as I walked to Pimlico. Upsetting Mother Oldershaw's nerves, in the first place, and then twisting her round my little finger, in the second, promised me, as I thought, an interesting occupation for the rest of the afternoon.

"When I got to Pimlico, a surprise was in store for we. The house was shut up—not only on Mrs. Oldershaw's side, but on Doctor Downward's as well. A padlock was on the shop door; and a man was hanging about on the watch, who might have been an ordinary idler certainly, but who looked, to my mind, like a policeman in disguise.

"Knowing the risks the doctor runs in his particular form of practice, I suspected at once that something serious had happened, and that even cunning Mrs. Oldershaw was compromised this time. Without stopping, or making any inquiry, therefore, I called the first cab that passed me, and drove to the post-office to which I had desired my letters to be forwarded if any came for me after I left my Thorpe Ambrose lodging.

"On inquiry a letter was produced for 'Miss Gwilt.' It was in Mother Oldershaw's handwriting, and it told me (as I had supposed) that the doctor had got into a serious difficulty—that she was herself most unfortunately mixed up in the matter, and that they were both in hiding for the present. The letter ended with some sufficiently venomous sentences about my conduct at Thorpe Ambrose, and with a warning that I have not heard the last of Mrs. Oldershaw yet. It relieved me to find her writing in this way—for she would have been civil and cringing if she had had any suspicion of what I have really got in view. I burned the letter as soon as the candles came up. And there, for the present, is an end of the connection between Mother Jezebel and me. I must do all my own dirty work now; and I shall be all the safer, perhaps, for trusting nobody's hands to do it but my own."

"July 31st.—More useful information for me. I met Midwinter again in the Park (on the pretext that my reputation might suffer if he called too often at my lodgings), and heard the last news of Armadale since I left the hotel yesterday.

"After he had written to Miss Milroy, Midwinter took the opportunity of speaking to him about the necessary business arrangements during his absence from the great house. It was decided that the servants should be put on board wages, and that Mr. Bashwood should be left in charge. (Somehow, I don't like this re-appearance of Mr. Bashwood in connection with my present interests, but there is no help for it.) The next question—the question of money—was settled at once by Mr. Armadale himself. All his available ready-money (a large sum) is to be lodged by Mr. Bashwood in Coutts's Bank, and to be there deposited in Armadale's name. This, he said, would save him the worry of any further letter-writing to his steward, and would enable him to get what he wanted, when he went abroad, at a moment's notice. The plan thus proposed, being certainly the simplest and the safest, was adopted with Midwinter's full concurrence; and here the business discussion would have ended, if the everlasting Mr. Bashwood had not turned up again in the conversation, and prolonged it in an entirely new direction.

"On reflection, it seems to have struck Midwinter that the whole responsibility at Thorpe Ambrose ought not to rest on Mr. Bashwood's shoulders. Without in the least distrusting him, Midwinter felt, nevertheless, that he ought to have somebody set over him, to apply to in case of emergency. Armadale made no objection to this; he only asked, in his helpless way, who the person was to be?

"The answer was not an easy one to arrive at.

"Either of the two solicitors at Thorpe Ambrose might have been employed, but Armadale was on bad terms with both of them. Any reconciliation with such a bitter enemy as the elder lawyer, Mr. Darch, was out of the question; and reinstating Mr. Pedgift in his former position implied a tacit sanction on Armadale's part of the lawyer's abominable conduct toward me, which was scarcely consistent with the respect and regard that he felt for a lady who was soon to be his friend's wife. After some further discussion, Midwinter hit on a new suggestion which appeared to meet the difficulty. He proposed that Armadale should write to a respectable solicitor at Norwich, stating his position in general terms, and requesting that gentleman to act as Mr. Bashwood's adviser and superintendent when occasion required. Norwich being within an easy railway ride of Thorpe Ambrose, Armadale saw no objection to the proposal, and promised to write to the Norwich lawyer. Fearing that he might make some mistake if he wrote without assistance, Midwinter had drawn him out a draft of the necessary letter, and Armadale was now engaged in copying the draft, and also in writing to Mr. Bashwood to lodge the money immediately in Coutts's Bank.

"These details are so dry and uninteresting in themselves that I hesitated at first about putting them down in my diary. But a little reflection has convinced me that they are too important to be passed over. Looked at from my point of view, they mean this—that Armadale's own act is now cutting him off from all communication with Thorpe Ambrose, even by letter. He is as good as dead already to everybody he leaves behind him. The causes which have led to such a result as that are causes which certainly claim the best place I can give them in these pages."

"August 1st.—Nothing to record, but that I have had a long, quiet, happy day with Midwinter. He hired a carriage, and we drove to Richmond, and dined there. After to-day's experience, it is impossible to deceive myself any longer. Come what may of it, I love him.

"I have fallen into low spirits since he left me. A persuasion has taken possession of my mind that the smooth and prosperous course of my affairs since I have been in London is too smooth and prosperous to last. There is something oppressing me to-night, which is more than the oppression of the heavy London air."

"August 2d.—Three o'clock.—My presentiments, like other people's, have deceived me often enough; but I am almost afraid that my presentiment of last night was really prophetic, for once in a way.

"I went after breakfast to a milliner's in this neighborhood to order a few cheap summer things, and thence to Midwinter's hotel to arrange with him for another day in the country. I drove to the milliner's and to the hotel, and part of the way back. Then, feeling disgusted with the horrid close smell of the cab (somebody had been smoking in it, I suppose), I got out to walk the rest of the way. Before I had been two minutes on my feet, I discovered that I was being followed by a strange man.

"This may mean nothing but that an idle fellow has been struck by my figure, and my appearance generally. My face could have made no impression on him, for it was hidden as usual by my veil. Whether he followed me (in a cab, of course) from the milliner's, or from the hotel, I cannot say. Nor am I quite certain whether he did or did not track me to this door. I only know that I lost sight of him before I got back. There is no help for it but to wait till events enlighten me. If there is anything serious in what has happened, I shall soon discover it."

"Five o'clock.—It is serious. Ten minutes since, I was in my bedroom, which communicates with the sitting-room. I was just coming out, when I heard a strange voice on the landing outside—a woman's voice. The next instant the sitting-room door was suddenly opened; the woman's voice said, 'Are these the apartments you have got to let?' and though the landlady, behind her, answered, 'No! higher up, ma'am,' the woman came on straight to my bedroom, as if she had not heard. I had just time to slam the door in her face before she saw me. The necessary explanations and apologies followed between the landlady and the stranger in the sitting-room, and then I was left alone again.

"I have no time to write more. It is plain that somebody has an interest in trying to identify me, and that, but for my own quickness, the strange woman would have accomplished this object by taking me by surprise. She and the man who followed me in the street are, I suspect, in league together; and there is probably somebody in the background whose interests they are serving. Is Mother Oldershaw attacking me in the dark? or who else can it be? No matter who it is; my present situation is too critical to be trifled with. I must get away from this house to-night, and leave no trace behind me by which I can be followed to another place."

"August 3d.—Gary Street, Tottenham Court Road.—I got away last night (after writing an excuse to Midwinter, in which 'my invalid mother' figured as the all-sufficient cause of my disappearance); and I have found refuge here. It has cost me some money; but my object is attained! Nobody can possibly have traced me from All Saints' Terrace to this address.

"After paying my landlady the necessary forfeit for leaving her without notice, I arranged with her son that he should take my boxes in a cab to the cloak-room at the nearest railway station, and send me the ticket in a letter, to wait my application for it at the post-office. While he went his way in one cab, I went mine in another, with a few things for the night in my little hand-bag.

"I drove straight to the milliner's shop, which I had observed, when I was there yesterday, had a back entrance into a mews, for the apprentices to go in and out by. I went in at once, leaving the cab waiting for me at the door. 'A man is following me,' I said, 'and I want to get rid of him. Here is my cab fare; wait ten minutes before you give it to the driver, and let me out at once by the back way!' In a moment I was out in the mews; in another, I was in the next street; in a third, I hailed a passing omnibus, and was a free woman again.

"Having now cut off all communication between me and my last lodgings, the next precaution (in case Midwinter or Armadale are watched) is to cut off all communication, for some days to come at least, between me and the hotel. I have written to Midwinter—making my supposititious mother once more the excuse—to say that I am tied to my nursing duties, and that we must communicate by writing only for the present. Doubtful as I still am of who my hidden enemy really is, I can do no more to defend myself than I have done now."

"August 4th.—The two friends at the hotel had both written to me. Midwinter expresses his regret at our separation, in the tenderest terms. Armadale writes an entreaty for help under very awkward circumstances. A letter from Major Milroy has been forwarded to him from the great house, and he incloses it in his letter to me.

"Having left the seaside, and placed his daughter safely at the school originally chosen for her (in the neighborhood of Ely), the major appears to have returned to Thorpe Ambrose at the close of last week; to have heard then, for the first time, the reports about Armadale and me; and to have written instantly to Armadale to tell him so.

"The letter is stern and short. Major Milroy dismisses the report as unworthy of credit, because it is impossible for him to believe in such an act of 'cold-blooded treachery,' as the scandal would imply, if the scandal were true. He simply writes to warn Armadale that, if he is not more careful in his actions for the future, he must resign all pretensions to Miss Milroy's hand. 'I neither expect, nor wish for, an answer to this' (the letter ends), 'for I desire to receive no mere protestations in words. By your conduct, and by your conduct alone, I shall judge you as time goes on. Let me also add that I positively forbid you to consider this letter as an excuse for violating the terms agreed on between us, by writing again to my daughter. You have no need to justify yourself in her eyes, for I fortunately removed her from Thorpe Ambrose before this abominable report had time to reach her; and I shall take good care, for her sake, that she is not agitated and unsettled by hearing it where she is now.'

"Armadale's petition to me, under these circumstances, entreats (as I am the innocent cause of the new attack on his character) that I will write to the major to absolve him of all indiscretion in the matter, and to say that he could not, in common politeness, do otherwise than accompany me to London.

"I forgive the impudence of his request, in consideration of the news that he sends me. It is certainly another circumstance in my favor that the scandal at Thorpe Ambrose is not to be allowed to reach Miss Milroy's ears. With her temper (if she did hear it) she might do something desperate in the way of claiming her lover, and might compromise me seriously. As for my own course with Armadale, it is easy enough. I shall quiet him by promising to write to Major Milroy; and I shall take the liberty, in my own private interests, of not keeping my word.

"Nothing in the least suspicious has happened to-day. Whoever my enemies are, they have lost me, and between this and the time when I leave England they shall not find me again. I have been to the post-office, and have got the ticket for my luggage, inclosed to me in a letter from All Saints' Terrace, as I directed. The luggage itself I shall still leave at the cloak-room, until I see the way before me more clearly than I see it now."