"Put what interpretation you please upon my words," he said, "but recognize the facts. There is a strict alliance, if you prefer that phrase, between me and Sir Reginald Eversleigh, and his present intimacy, with his seeming devotion to Madame Durski, prevents him from carrying out the terms of that alliance to my satisfaction. I am therefore resolved to break off that intimacy. Do you comprehend me so far?" "Yes, I comprehend you so far," answered Miss Brewer, "perfectly." "Considering Madame Durski's feelings for Sir Reginald--feelings of which, I assure you, I consider him, even according to my own unpretending standard, entirely unworthy--this intimacy cannot be broken off without pain to her, but it might be destroyed without any profit, nay, with ruinous loss. Now, I cannot spare her the pain; that is necessary, indispensable, both for her good, and--which I don't pretend not to regard more urgently--my own. But I can make the pain eminently profitable to her, with your assistance--in fact, so profitable as to secure the peace and prosperity of her whole future life." He paused, and Miss Brewer looked steadily at him, but she did not speak. "Reginald Eversleigh owes me money, Miss Brewer, and I cannot afford to allow him to remain in my debt. I don't mean that he has borrowed money from me, for I never had any to lend, and, having any, should never have lent it." He saw how the tone he was taking suited the woman's perverted mind, and pursued it. "But I have done him certain services for which he undertook to pay me money, and I want money. He has none, and the only means by which he can procure it is a rich marriage. Such a marriage is within his reach; one of the richest heiresses in London would have him for the asking--she is an ironmonger's daughter, and pines to be My Lady--but he hesitates, and loses his time in visits to Madame Durski, which are only doing them both harm. Doing her harm, because they are deceiving her, encouraging a delusion; and doing him harm, because they are wasting his time, and incurring the risk of his being 'blown upon' to the ironmonger. Vulgar people of the kind, you know, my dear Miss Brewer, give ugly names, and attach undue importance to intimacies of this kind, and--and--in short, it is on the cards that Madame Durski may spoil Sir Reginald's game. Well, as that game is also mine, you will find no difficulty in understanding that I do not intend Madame Durski shall spoil it." "Yes, I understand that," said Miss Brewer, as plainly as before; "but I don't understand how Paulina is to be served in the affair, and I don't understand what my part is to be in it." "I am coming to that," he said. "You cannot be unaware of the impression which Madame Durski has made upon Sir Reginald's cousin, Douglas Dale." "I know he did admire her," said Miss Brewer, "but he has not been here since his brother's death. He is a rich man now."