"Well, then, I went into lodgings; that wicked woman had left me one street suit--and to-day they turned me out because my money was all gone. I had a little money in my purse--and this dress had been ordered for a fancy ball--it _is_ smart, isn't it?--and it came after that wretch had gone--and the guitar, too--and I thought I could make a little money. I really _can_ sing, though you mightn't think it. And I've been at it since five o'clock--and I've only got one shilling and seven pence. And no one but you has ever even thought of thinking whether I was tired or hungry or anything--and papa always took such care of me. I feel as if I had been beaten." "Let me think," he said. "Oh--how glad I am that you happened to come this way." He reflected a moment. Then he said-- "I shall lock up all the doors and windows in the house--and then I shall give you my latch-key, and you can let yourself in and stay the night here--there is no one in the house. I will catch the night train, and bring my mother up to-morrow. Then we will see what can be done." The only excuse for this rash young man is to be found in the fact that while he was feeding his strange guest with cake and wine she was feeding, with her beauty, the first fire of his first love. Love at first sight is all nonsense, we know--we who have come to forty year--but at twenty-one one does not somehow recognise it for the nonsense it is. "But don't you know anyone in London?" he asked in a sensible postscript. It was not yet so dark but that he could see the crimson flush on her face. "Not _know_," she said. "Papa wouldn't like me to spoil my chances of knowing the right people with any foolishness like this. There's no one I could _let_ know. You see, papa's so very rich, and at home they expect me to--to get acquainted with dukes and things--and--" She stopped. "American heiresses are expected to marry English dukes," he said, with a distinct physical pain at his heart. "It wasn't I who said that," said the girl, smiling; "but that's so, anyhow." And then she sighed. "So it's your destiny to marry a duke, is it?" the young man spoke slowly. "All the same," he added irrelevantly, "you shall have the latch-key." "You _are_ kind," she said for the third time, and reached her hand out to him. He did not kiss it then, only took it in his, and felt how small and cold it was. Then it was taken away. He says that he only talked to her for half an hour--but the neighbours, from whose eyes suburban hawthorns and laburnums are powerless to conceal the least of our actions, declare that he sat with the guitar player on the iron seat till well after midnight; further, that when they parted he kissed her hand, and that she then put her hands on his shoulders--"quite shamelessly, you know"--and kissed him lightly on both cheeks. It is known that he passed the night prowling in our suburban lanes, and caught the 6.25 train in the morning to the place where his people were staying.