"A little nothing! Listen, Mr. Ludlow! You have saved me from death, and you are kind enough to wish me, under your auspices, to begin life again. Hear, first, what was my former life. Hear it, and then see the soundness of your well-intentioned plans. My father was an infantry captain, who was killed in the Crimea. After the news came of his death, my mother's friends, wealthy tradespeople, raised a subscription to pay her an annuity of 150_l_, on condition of her never troubling them again. She accepted this, and she and I went to live for cheapness at Tenby in Wales. There was no break in my life until two years since, when I was eighteen years old. Up to that time, school, constant practice at home (for I determined to be well educated), and attendance on my mother, an invalid, formed my life. Then came the usual character--without which the drama of woman's life is incomplete--a man!" She hesitated for a moment, and looked up as Geoffrey Ludlow leaned forward, breathing thickly through his nostrils; then she continued-- "This one was a soldier, and claimed acquaintance with a dead comrade's widow; had his claim allowed, and came to us morning, noon, and night. A man of the world, they called him; could sit and talk with my mother of her husband's virtues and still-remembered name, and press my hand, and gaze into my eyes, and whisper in my ear whenever her head was turned." "And you?" "And I! What would a girl do, brought up at a sleepy watering-place, and seeing nobody but the curate or the doctor? I listened to his every word, I believed his every look; and when he said to me, 'On such a night fly with me,' I fled with him without remorse." Geoffrey Ludlow must have anticipated something of this kind, and yet when he heard it, he dropped his head and shook it, as though under the effect of a staggering blow. The action was not unnoticed by Margaret. "Ah," said she, in low tones and with a sad smile, "I saw how your schemes would melt away before my story." This time it was his hand that came out and caught hers in its grip. "Ah, wait until you have heard the end, now very close at hand. The old, old story: a coming marriage, which never came, protracted and deferred now for one excuse, now for another--the fear of friends, the waiting for promotion, the--ah, every note in the whole gamut of lies! And then--" "Spare yourself and me--I know enough!" "No; hear it out! It is due to you, it is due to me. A sojourn in Italy, a sojourn in England--gradual coolness, final flight. But such flight! One line to say that he was ruined, and would not drag me down in his degradation--no hope of a future meeting--no provision for present want. I lived for a time by the sale of what he had given me,--first jewels, then luxuries, then--clothes. And then, just as I dropped into death's jaws, you found me."