“I can’t be a lower rascal than I showed myself this morning. Go on.” “Put on your hat, button up your overcoat, and come out.” “Out! What, in this fog, that’s almost blinding even indoors?” “Yes. I found you one fortune in the bowels of the earth. The second we must hunt for in the dim recesses of the air.” With a short laugh Goodhare rose, and waited while Rees slowly prepared himself for the walk. When they reached the street the brown mist was already so thick that the houses on the opposite side of the way were scarcely visible. Goodhare drew his young companion’s arm through his with a laugh. “Look at this beautiful atmosphere,” he said; “feel it, hug it up to you. Talk of the blue skies of Italy! I wouldn’t give twopence for the brightest of them. These sweet, fair brown skies were made for rogues--like you and me.” Rees shuddered, but he did not dispute the point. Slowly, through the ever-thickening fog-cloud, they made their way together towards Trafalgar-square. CHAPTER XV. For months Deborah Audaer suffered from the horrible effect which the incidents of the visit to Rees had left upon her mind. London seemed to her the pestilential centre of all evil, physical and moral. The inky atmosphere, the black, gloomy streets, Rees Pennant’s dingy room, the passage full of deserted, dirty houses, all contributed to form a ghastly background to the picture of evil in which Amos Goodhare, with his cynical stare, and Rees, with his bold, feverish eyes, formed the central figures. That journey had shown her men and things from a new and hideous point of view. For a time all the sweetness and freshness of life seemed poisoned for her. She saw the ills in the world--poverty, sin, and sorrow, in a harder, colder light. Since Rees whom she loved, could be corrupt and base, what in the wide world could be pure? So she reasoned, womanlike, and suffered in silence for the rest of the year, seeing a new and uglier sadness in the autumn and winter changes of nature, and brooding over her poor lost ideal. Deborah was much too brave and good a girl for this change in her thoughts and feelings to find outward expression in her actions. Whatever view she might take of life in the abstract, the round of daily duties, which were sufficiently heavy, were fulfilled just as well as ever, and if Mrs. Pennant was shrewd enough to detect a change in the girl, it was not by finding the thin places in the old drawing-room curtains less carefully darned or her early cup of tea forgotten. For Deborah, to save the expense of keeping more than one servant, was perfect mistress of every household duty. This extreme domestic devotion, as Godwin considered it, excited in him great annoyance, the more so that he was now enjoying a salary which enabled him to send home a very handsome allowance.