"You may be sure, my dear, that I don't wish to get any more involved in this coil of sin and misery than you do," I began. "That isn't promising," she interrupted. "I want you to promise you'll say just that and no more." "Oh, I'll promise fast enough, if that's all you want," I said. "I don't trust you a bit, Basil," she lamented. "Now, I will explain to you all about it. I've thought the whole thing over." She did explain, at much greater length than she needed, and she was still giving me some very solemn charges when the bell rang, and I knew that Tedham had come. "Now, remember what I've told you," she called after me, as I went to the door, "and be sure to tell me, when you come back, just how he takes it and every word he says. Oh, dear, I know you'll make the most dreadful mess of it!" By this time I expected to do no less, but I was so curious to see Tedham again that I should have been willing to do much worse, rather than forego my meeting with him. I hope that there was some better feeling than curiosity in my heart, but I will, for the present, call it curiosity. I met him in the hall at the foot of the stairs, and put a witless cheeriness into the voice I bade him good-evening with, while I gave him my hand and led the way into the parlor. The twenty-four hours that had elapsed since I saw him there before had estranged him in a way that I find it rather hard to describe. He had shrunk from the approach to equality in which we had parted, and there was a sort of consciousness of disgrace in his look, such as might have shown itself if he had passed the time in a low debauch. But undoubtedly he had done nothing of the kind, and this effect in him was from a purely moral cause. He sat down on the edge of a chair, instead of leaning back, as he had done the night before. "Well, Tedham," I began, "we have seen your sister-in-law, and I may as well tell you at once that, so far as she is concerned, there will be nothing in the way of your meeting your daughter. The Haskeths are living at their old place in Somerville, and your daughter will be with them there to-morrow night--just at this moment she is away--and you can find her there, then, if you wish." Tedham kept those deep eye-hollows of his bent upon me, and listened with a passivity which did not end when I ceased to speak. I had said all that my wife had permitted me to say in her charge to me, and the incident ought to have been closed, as far as we were concerned. But Tedham's not speaking threw me off my guard. I could not let the matter end so bluntly, and I added, in the same spirit one makes a scrawl at the bottom of a page, "Of course, it's for you to decide whether you will or not." "What do you mean?" asked Tedham, feebly, but as if he were physically laying hold of me for help.