I shook my head at him and panic was dropping out of his eyes: “Can’t I marry Annie honourably?” he quavered. I took a sinister delight in turning the knife inside him. I was going to let him go anyhow: the sort of cat that I am always lets its mice go. (That mouse, by-the-bye, has never again put in an appearance.) “My dear fellow,” I said, “does not your delicacy let you see the hole you put me into? It’s to my interest that you should not marry Miss Averies and you ask me to advise you on the point.” His mouth dropped open: positively he had never considered that when he married I lost the confounded three hundred a year for administering the Burden Trust. I sat and smiled at him to give him plenty of time to let his mind agonize over his position. “Oh, hang it,” he said.... And his silly eyes rolled round my room looking for that Providence that he felt ought to intervene in his behalf. When they rested on me again I said: “There, go away. Of course it’s a fault of your youth. Of course every man that’s fit to call himself a man has seduced a clergyman’s daughter.” He said: “Oh, but there was not anything common about it.” “No,” I answered, “you had an uncommonly good time of it with your moral scruples. I envy you the capacity. You’ll have a duller one with Miss Averies, you know.” That was too much for him to take in, so he smoothed his hat. “When you said I was ... debauched ... you were only laughing at me. That was hardly fair. I’m tremendously in earnest.” “You’re only play-acting compared with me,” I answered. He had the air of buttoning his coat after putting a cheque into his breast pocket. He had got, you see, the cheque he expected: my applause of his successful seduction, my envy of his good fortune. That was what he had come for--and he got it. He went away with it pretty bare-facedly, but he stopped at the threshold to let drop: “Of course if I had known you would be offended by my having recourse to Annie’s solicitors for the settlement....” I told him I was laughing at him about that too. “It was the correct thing to do, you know,” were the words he shut the door upon. The ass....