P. S. I have Brown, Shepherd, & Co.’s written promise that with the payment of this last five thousand, all proceedings against me shall be entirely stopped, and that neither as a firm nor as individuals will they remember that Ephraim Earle and Simeon Halleck are one. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XVII. MIDNIGHT AT THE OLD IZARD PLACE. CLARKE knew when he began to read this letter what effect it was likely to have on his own prospects, but he was little prepared for the change it was destined to make in Polly. She, who at its commencement had been merely an apprehensive child, became a wan and stricken woman before the final words were reached; her girlish face, with its irresistible dimples, altering under her emotions till little of her old expression was left. Her words, when she could speak, showed what the recoil of her whole nature had been from the depths of depravity thus heartlessly revealed to her. “Oh, what wickedness!” she cried. “I did not know that such things could be! Certainly I never heard anything like it before. Do you wonder that I have always felt stifled in his presence?” Mrs. Unwin and Clarke tried to comfort her, but she seemed to be possessed of but one idea. “Take me home!” she cried; “let me think it out alone. I am a disgrace to you here; he is a thief and I am the daughter of a thief. Until every cent that he has taken is returned, I am a participator in his crime and not worthy to look you in the face.” They tried to prove to her the fallacy of this reasoning, but she would not be convinced. “Take me home!” she again repeated; and Clarke out of pure consideration complied with her request. She was still living with the Fishers, but when they reached the humble doorstep which had been witness to many a tender parting and loving embrace, Polly gave her lover a strange look, and hardly lingered long enough to hear his final words of encouragement and hope. “I will see you to-morrow,” she murmured, “but I can say no more to-night—no, not one word”; and with something of the childish petulance of her earlier years she partially closed the door upon him, and then was half sorry for it, when she heard the deep sigh that escaped him as he plunged back into the snow that lay piled up between the house and the gate. “I am wicked,” she muttered, half to herself, half to him; “come back!” but the words were lost in the chilly wind, and in another moment he had reached the street and was gone. Had he looked back he would not have disappeared so suddenly, for Polly, as soon as she thought herself alone, suddenly pushed open the door, peered out and, with a momentary hesitation, slipped out again into the street.