'Yes; it has not been pleasant, father. He came in looking anxious, as he generally has done of late, thinking that my request for him to call this morning meant that there was news of some sort, pleasant or otherwise. I told him at once that I had been seriously thinking over the matter for some time, and that I had for several reasons come to the conclusion that it would be better that our engagement should terminate, and then gave him my first reason. He was very earnest, and protested that as he had never for a moment believed in these rumours he could not see that there was any reason whatever for breaking off the engagement. I said that I did him full justice in that respect, but that the matter had certainly been a great source of annoyance to him, and that I was convinced of the probability of further trouble of the same kind, and that as we had been powerless to detect the author of this we might be as powerless in the future. Then I frankly told him that I knew that his hopes were greatly centred in his political career, and that for him to have a wife who was the subject of a scandal would be a very serious drawback to him. He did not attempt to deny this, but then urged that a breach of the engagement at present would be taken to mean that he had been affected by the rumours. I said that full justice should be done to him in that respect; then, as he still protested--though I am convinced that at heart he felt relieved--I added that there were certain other reasons into which I need not go fully; that I thought that I had accepted him without sufficient consideration, and that I had gradually come to feel that we were not altogether suited to each other, and that a wife would always occupy but a secondary position in his thoughts, politics and public business occupying the first. I said that I had been brought up perhaps in an old-fashioned way and entertained the old-fashioned idea that a wife should hold the first place. 'He was disposed to be angry, because, no doubt, he felt that it was perfectly true. However I said, "Do not be angry, Lord Halliburn. I shall be very, very sorry if we part other than good friends. I like and esteem you very much, and had it not been for these troubles I should never have thought of breaking my engagement to you. As it is, I am thinking as much of you as of myself. I am convinced I shall have further troubles, and perhaps more serious ones. I have already, in fact, had some sort of warning of them, and if they come it would make it much harder for me to bear them were our names associated together, for I feel that your prospects would be seriously injured as well as my own." '"You talk it over very calmly and coolly," he said, irritably.