“I hope that Ellen will feel pleased with the effect of her embassy,” thought Henry; then suddenly he turned white, and, choking with wrath, said aloud, “Great Heaven! to think that I should have come so low as to be forced to suffer such insults from a cur like that! What will be the end of it? One thing is clear: I can’t stand much more. I’m done for in the Service; but I dare say that I could get a billet as mate on a liner, or even a command of some vessel in the Canadian or Australian waters where I am known. Unless there is a change soon, that is what I’ll do, and take Joan with me. Nobody will sneer at her there, anyway —at least, nobody who sees her.” Meanwhile Ellen was standing in the hall making pretence to arrange some flowers, but in reality waiting, not without a certain sense of anxiety, to learn the result of the interview which she had been instrumental in bringing about. She hoped that Henry would snub her _fiancé_ in payment of sundry remarks that Edward had made to her, and which she had by no means forgotten, although she was not at present in a position to resent them. She hoped also, with some lack of perspicuity, that Henry would be impressed by Edward’s remonstrances, and that, when he came to understand that her future was imperilled, he would hasten to sacrifice his own. But here she make her great mistake, not foreseeing that a man of Milward’s moral fibre could not by any possibility neglect to push a fancied vantage home, any more than he could refrain from being insolent and brutal towards one whom he thought at his mercy; for, even in the upper walks of life, individuals do exist who take pleasure in grinding the heads of the fallen deeper into the mire. Presently Ellen was alarmed to hear Henry’s words “Now go” echo through the house, followed by the sound of a banging door. Next instant Edward appeared upon the stairs, and the expression of his features betrayed a wondrous mixture of astonishment, fear and indignation. “What have you been doing, Edward?” she said, as he approached. “You do not mean to tell me that you have been brawling, and in this house?” “Brawling? Oh yes, say that I have been brawling,” gasped Edward, when at last he managed to speak. “That infernal brother of yours has thrown a crutch at me; but by all means say that I have been brawling.” “Thrown a crutch? And what had you been doing to make him throw a crutch?” “Doing? Why, nothing, except tell him that he was a fraud and a bankrupt. He took it all quite quietly till the end, then suddenly he said that if he wasn’t a cripple he would kick me downstairs, and threw a crutch at my head; and, by George! I believe from the look of him that if he could he would have done it too!” “It is very possible,” said Ellen, “if you were foolish enough to use such language towards him. You have had an escape. Henry has a fearful temper when roused.”