"I must begin the story from the beginning. One night I was coming home in London very late, about two o'clock, when whom should I meet in the street suddenly but Mountjoy Scarborough. It came out afterward that he had then been gambling; but when he encountered me he was intoxicated. He took me suddenly by the collar and shook me violently, and did his best to maltreat me. What words were spoken I cannot remember; but his conduct to me was as that of a savage beast. I struggled with him in the street as a man would struggle who is attacked by a wild dog. I think that he did not explain the cause of his hatred, though, of course, my memory as to what took place at that moment is disturbed and imperfect; but I did know in my heart why it was that he had quarrelled with me." "Why was it?" Florence asked. "Because he thought that I had ventured to love you." "No, no!" shrieked Florence; "he could not have thought that." "He did think so, and he was right enough. If I have never said so before, I am bound at any rate to say it now." He paused for a moment, but she made him no answer. "In the struggle between us he fell on the pavement against a rail;--and then I left him." "Well?" "He has never been heard of since. On the following day, in the afternoon, I left London for Buston; but nothing had been then heard of his disappearance. I neither knew of it nor suspected it. The question is, when others were searching for him, was I bound to go to the police and declare what I had suffered from him that night? Why should I connect his going with the outrage which I had suffered?" "But why not tell it all?" "I should have been asked why he had quarrelled with me. Ought I to have said that I did not know? Ought I to have pretended that there was no cause? I did know, and there was a cause. It was because he thought that I might prevail with you, now that he was a beggar, disowned by his own father." "I would never have given him up for that," said Florence. "But do you not see that your name would have been brought in,--that I should have had to speak of you as though I thought it possible that you loved me?" Then he paused, and Florence sat silent. But another thought struck him now. It occurred to him that under the plea put forward he would appear to seek shelter from his silence as to her name. He was aware how anxious he was on his own behalf not to mention the occurrence in the street, and it seemed that he was attempting to escape under the pretence of a fear that her name would be dragged in. "But independently of that I do not see why I should be subjected to the annoyance of letting it be known that I was thus attacked in the streets. And the time has now gone by. It did not occur to me when first he was missed that the matter would have been of such importance. Now it is too late." "I suppose that you ought to have told his father."