“She told me that they would have been pretty well off but for his extravagance. He was getting four hundred a year, and they had no children. She complained that it was her fate to be allied with spendthrifts. Her father had squandered his fortune; and her husband’s improvident habits kept her in continual debt and difficulty. It grieved me to see the shabbiness of her surroundings—the squalid lodging-house parlour, without so much as a bunch of flowers or a stand of books to show that it was in the occupation of a lady. There was a cigarbox on the mantelpiece, and there was a heap of newspapers on the sofa, and a pair of shabby slippers inside the fender. It was a room to make one shudder. I asked her if she was reconciled to her father, and she said no; she had heard nothing of him since her marriage. I felt very unhappy about her after we parted at Hungerford Market. I saw her standing on the pavement as the omnibus drove away, a tall, slim figure, distinguished-looking in spite of her shabby mantle and rusty black silk gown. I had promised to go and see her again, though I was very seldom at liberty at that time, and I went to Cecil Street two or three times in the course of the winter, but she was always out, and there was something in the tone of her letters that made me think she did not wish to see me again, though I believe she was fond of me always, poor soul. I saw nothing more of her, and heard nothing until nearly four years afterwards, when I was spending an afternoon at Richmond with my pupils—two girls of fourteen and sixteen—and I came face to face with her in front of Thomson’s Seat. She was with a tall, handsome man, whom at first I took to be her husband: but there was something in the manner of both of them that impressed me uncomfortably, and I began to fear that this was not her husband. She looked much brighter than when I saw her in Cecil Street, and she was better dressed—very plainly, but in excellent taste. She took me aside a little way while her companion stood and talked to the two girls. She put her arm through mine in her old caressing way, and then she said, abruptly, ‘I almost wonder that you will speak to me. I thought you would cut me dead.’ I looked puzzled, no doubt; so she said, ‘Perhaps you don’t know what a lost creature I am. Perhaps you have not heard.’ I told her I had heard nothing about her since we parted at Hungerford Market, and then she gave a deep sigh, and said, ‘Well, I am not going to deceive you. That,’ with a jerk of her head towards the man who was standing with his back to us, ‘is not my husband, but he and I are bound together for the rest of our lives, and we are perfectly happy together. Society would scorn us and trample upon us no doubt if we gave it a chance; but we don’t. We live out of the world, and we live for one another. Now, aren’t you shocked with me? Don’t you want to run away?’ she asked, with a little laugh, which sounded as if she was very nearly crying. I told