‘Then you must promise me to have no more to do with him. See to what you have driven me already. I shall have to have a reckoning with him to-morrow. I shall tell him what I think of him, and promise him a horsewhipping, if ever he ventures upon such impertinence again——’ ‘Roger!’ The presumption, the audacity of his words, caused Ada to turn pale. ‘And of course,’ Roger went on, calmly, ‘I shall have to shake the dust of this place from my feet. I have no fear of not being able to get another situation; but it may be some little time first; it may be a long way from here when I do get it; it cannot be here, of course; there is no other place here. And that will separate us. You did not know or foresee all this; you could not, but it is so, you see. And I cannot speak quite calmly about it.’ Ada was silent. Roger thought she was thunderstruck on being shown the consequences of what had doubtless seemed to her a few flattering attentions. ‘I don’t see the good of making all that fuss about it,’ she said at last. ‘There was no wrong in Mr. Askam’s saying a few words to me; but people will say there is, if you go on in that way.’ (A feminine view of the case which had not before occurred to Roger.) ‘I have always been a friend of Miss Wynter’s——’ ‘Yes, indeed; and precious little good it has done you,’ was Roger’s ill-advised retort. ‘And Miss Askam sat talking with me for nearly an hour the other day. There’s nothing strange about it. I have always felt at home with the gentry about here, and there’s proof positive that it isn’t only the gentlemen who notice me——’ ‘Notice you—notice you!’ he said, stung intensely by her words. ‘Who wants you to be noticed? You have no need of any one’s notice. No honest girl has——’ ‘Honest girl! Well, I declare!’ ‘Your lines are not cast among such people. They only amuse themselves with you, whatever you may think. If you keep them at a distance they respect you. As for Miss Wynter, I have always disliked her——’ ‘Yes, you have; and without a scrap of reason. You think she’s worse than poison, and say all sorts of things about her,—false, I’ve heard you call her. And there was she before you came in, talking to Mr. Askam and trying with all her might to make him behave himself——’ ‘Oh!’ said Roger, turning sharp upon her, with an expression of bitter pain upon his face. ‘If _she_ did that, he must have needed it, sorely. And you said to me that there was no harm in what he was doing. Ada, my girl, this is cruel; it is, indeed.’ ‘Oh dear!’ exclaimed Ada, mentally anathematising her maladroit admission. ‘She was just as bad as you, for making too much of it. I only meant to show that she is not the false woman you call her.’ ‘I judge her by her actions. As for Miss Askam, she is different. Dr. Rowntree knows her, and he says so; and Michael Langstroth——’