She laughed. 'You will tell me some day--when you please--how you lost that fortune. Oh! what a thing it is to be a man and to have all these adventures!--Now, Athelstan, consider--if it had not been for your bad fortune, you would never have had all this good fortune.' 'True. Yet the bad fortune came in such an ugly shape. There has been a black side to my history. How was I to tell people why I left my own country? I could make no friends. At the first appearance of friendship, I had to become cold, lest they should ask me where I came from and why I left home.' Elsie was silent. They carried out part of their programme. They went to see the pictures--it was eight years since Athelstan had seen a picture--and after the pictures they walked in the Park. Then they went home and waited for George, who presently appeared. Then they went to one of the Regent Street restaurants and made a little feast. After this, Elsie asked them to come home and spend a quiet evening talking about things. By common consent they avoided one topic. Edmund Gray was not so much as mentioned, nor was the malignity of Checkley alluded to. They talked of old days, when Athelstan was a big boy and George a little boy and Elsie a child. They talked of the long engagement, and the hopeless time, when it seemed as if they were going to marry on two hundred pounds a year: and of that day of miracle and marvel when Mr. Dering gave to one of them a fortune, and to the other a partnership. They talked of their honeymoon and the tour they were going to make, and the beautiful places they would see. Tours and Blois, Chenonceaux and Amboise; Angoulême and Poitiers and La Rochelle; and of their return, and the lovely flat, where the friends would be made so welcome. Athelstan was a person of some sympathy. Elsie talked as freely to him as she could to George. They talked till midnight. Then Elsie got up. 'Whatever happens, Athelstan,' she said, 'mind--whatever happens, you shall give me away on the 12th.' 'Now she has left us,' said George, 'you may tell me why she refused to stay at home.' 'Well--I suppose you ought to know. Much for the same reason that I refused to stay at home. They then chose to jump at the conclusion that at one step I had become, from a man of honour, a stupid and clumsy forger. They now choose--I am ashamed to say--my mother and sister choose--to believe that you and I together have devised and invented this elaborate scheme of forgery. With this end in view, it has been found necessary to contrive certain little fabrications--as that I have been living in London on my wits--that is to say, by the exercise of cheatery--for the last eight years; and that, being in rags and penniless, I persuaded you to join me in this neat little buccaneering job.' 'Oh! it is too absurd! But I suspected something. Well--it is perfectly easy to put a stop to that.'