except the man himself, to blame. He was dimly conscious that his associate was stronger than he, stronger in will, stronger in knowledge of men, and somehow, though he never defined or acknowledged the feeling to himself, he mistrusted and feared him. He liked him, too, he felt grateful to him for his help; he did not discern the interested motives which actuated him, and, indeed, they were but small, and would by no means have accounted for all Routh's proceedings towards Dallas. Nor is it necessary that they should; a villain is not, therefore, altogether precluded from likings, or even the feebler forms of friendship, and Dallas was not simply silly and egotistical when he believed that Routh felt kindly and warmly towards him. Still, whether a merciful and occult influence was at work within him or the tide of his feelings had been turned by his stolen interview with his mother, by his being brought into such positive contact with her life and its conditions, and having been made to realize the bitterness he had infused into it, it were vain to inquire. Whatever his motives, however mixed their nature or confused their origin, he was filled, whenever he was out of Routh's presence, and looked his life in the face, with an ardent longing to "cut the whole concern," as he phrased it in his thoughts. And Harriet?--for the "whole concern" included her, and he was forced to remember--Harriet, the only woman whose society he liked--Harriet, whom he admired with an admiration as pure and respectful as he could have felt for her, had he met her in the least equivocal, nay, even in the most exalted position. Well, he would be very sorry to lose Harriet, but, after all, she cared only for Routh; and he was dangerous. "I must turn over a new leaf, for _her_ sake" (he meant for his mother's); "and I can't turn it while they are at my elbows." From which conviction on the part of George it is sufficiently evident that Routh and Harriet had ample reason to apprehend that Dallas, on whom they desired to retain a hold, for more reasons than one, was slipping through their fingers. George Dallas was more than usually occupied with such thoughts one morning, six weeks after his unsuccessful visit to Poynings. He had been very much with Routh and Deane during this period, and yet he had begun to feel aware, with a jealous and suspicious sense of it, too, that he really knew very little of what they had been about. They met in the evening, in pursuit of pleasure, and they abandoned themselves to it; or they met at Routh's lodgings, and Dallas surrendered himself to the charm which Harriet's society always had for him. But he had begun to observe of late that there was no reference to the occupation of the earlier part of the day, and that while there was apparently a close bond of mutual confidence or convenience between Routh and Deane, there was some under-current of mutual dislike.