In the meantime the first thick fog of the season was settling down steadily over London, and when Amos Goodhare rejoined Rees in the little back room, the gas which they were obliged to light shone dimly through a murky mist. The young man lay stretched on the narrow sofa. “Where is she?” he cried, starting up, with dishevelled hair and wild eyes. “Who? Lady Marion?” asked Goodhare lightly. “Lady Marion! No, d---- Lady Marion. I mean Deborah--my beautiful Deborah! I will see her--I must! If she will have me, I’ll give up all thoughts of that lanky caricature of a woman, beg her to forgive me, and marry her.” “Too late, too late, my impulsive young friend. ‘Your’ beautiful Deborah is on her way back to Carstow, too utterly disgusted with you to give you another thought.” “But, Goodhare, she did not understand. She is too pure, too good to believe that men can be such blackguards as you have made me. Let me go, I tell you, let me go!” He struggled to pass Goodhare, who locked the door and put the key in his pocket. “I am not going to have that poor girl insulted any more,” he said. “If she did not understand what you meant while she was with you, she did before she left London.” “You infernal scoundrel! You told her! You explained to her! You have ruined and degraded me, and you wanted to make me ruin and degrade her!” He flew at the elder man, who held him off with long, sinewy hands, as he could not have done before the once athletic young man had become weakened by excesses and dissipation. “_You_ degrade her! _You_ degrade that girl!” said Amos, letting the contempt he felt for his poor tool shine for once full from his eyes; “women of her sort are not degraded by such as you, nor by such as I either. You have to marry Lady Marion. I had to bring that about by any means I could. That’s explanation enough. And now to business.” He let the young man go, for Rees Pennant’s outburst of anger had already given place to sullen passivity, and he had thrown himself limply into a chair. Goodhare took a seat beside him. “Listen,” he said, “I have something to say to you. You know that we have come to the end of our money?” Rees nodded. “And of our credit?” Rees nodded again. “That at present there are no more new clothes to wear, horses to ride, evenings at the theater, suppers afterwards, trips to Paris, and the rest of it?” “Well, of course, I know it. Hasn’t every caller been a dun, and every letter a bill, for weeks past?” “Quite so. Now the question is, whether you want any more of those past pleasures, or whether you would prefer to set to work as a clerk on twenty shillings a week, or to creep back to Carstow, and live on the charity of your younger brothers?” Rees writhed. “Out with it. What do you want me to do? You know you have made work impossible to me; quiet life in the country insupportable. What have I got to do?” “Well, I suppose you know that, in the straits we are in, one mustn’t be too particular.”