got talking her extraordinary nerve left her and she showed me what she has been through--showed me also all her terror of the harm I could do her. ‘Wait till I’m married! wait till I’m married!’ She took hold of me, she almost sank on her knees. It seems to me highly immoral, one’s participation in her fraud; but there’s no doubt that she _must_ be married: I don’t know what I don’t see behind it! Therefore,” I wound up, “Dawling must keep his hands off.” Mrs. Meldrum had held her breath; she exhaled a long moan. “Well, that’s exactly what I came here to tell him.” “Then here he is.” Our unconscious host had just opened the door. Immensely startled at finding us he turned a frightened look from one to the other, as if to guess what disaster we were there to announce or avert. Mrs. Meldrum, on the spot, was all gaiety. “I’ve come to return your sweet visit. Ah,” she laughed, “I mean to keep up the acquaintance!” “Do--do,” he murmured mechanically and absently, continuing to look at us. Then abruptly he broke out: “He’s going to marry her.” I was surprised. “You already know?” He had had in his hand an evening newspaper; he tossed it down on the table. “It’s in that.” “Published--already?” I was still more surprised. “Oh, Flora can’t keep a secret!” Mrs. Meldrum humorously declared. She went up to poor Dawling and laid a motherly hand upon him. “It’s all right--it’s just as it ought to be: don’t think about her ever any more.” Then as he met this adjuration with a dismal stare in which the thought of her was as abnormally vivid as the colour of the pupil, the excellent woman put up her funny face and tenderly kissed him on the cheek. X I have spoken of these reminiscences as of a row of coloured beads, and I confess that as I continue to straighten out my chaplet I am rather proud of the comparison. The beads are all there, as I said--they slip along the string in their small, smooth roundness. Geoffrey Daw-ling accepted like a gentleman the event his evening paper had proclaimed; in view of which I snatched a moment to murmur him a hint to offer Mrs. Meldrum his hand. He returned me a heavy head-shake, and I judged that marriage would henceforth strike him very much as the traffic of the street may strike some poor incurable at the window of an hospital. Circumstances arising at this time promptly led to my making an absence from England, and circumstances already existing offered him a solid basis for similar action. He had after all the usual resource of a Briton--he could take to his boats.