"I don't pretend to know much about what's due to ladies," he said, after a pause so long and so trying that it seemed to hypnotize him. "I've not mixed much in Society"--W. M. Thackeray, in whose works he was now taking so much interest, had a great belief in Society--"but I should like to do what's straight." Silence still seemed the part of wisdom for Miss Dobbs. "If I've done wrong, I'm sorry." There was another very awkward pause to navigate. "But I didn't see no harm in what I've done, and that's the truth." A very slight sniff from Miss Dobbs ... a very slight sniff and nothing more. "If I never speak again, Miss Cora, it's a solemn fact." The sniff grew slightly more pronounced. "If I had known a bit more about Society, I might not have come here quite so often." "What's Society got to do with it, anyway?" suddenly asked Miss Dobbs, who was getting a trifle bored by the word. "I don't know," said the young man, "but I thought it had." "Why should you think so?" "Hasn't it, Miss Cora?" At this point, it seemed necessary for Miss Dobbs to regard the situation as a whole. A wrong move here might be fatal. "Yes, I suppose it has," said she, trying very hard to keep from laughing in his face. "If you put it that way." Again there was a pause. Henry Harper seemed to be overawed by this admission on the part of a lady of great experience. "I make no claim"--Miss Dobbs felt that a little well-timed assistance was called for--"if that's what you mean. My reputation's gone, but as I am only a girl, without a shilling, who has to fight her own battle, of course it's not of the slightest consequence." "That's just what I want to talk to you about," he said, with a simplicity that made her lip curl in spite of the strong will which ruled it. Zoe was right, it was cruelty to children. "Talk away, then," said Miss Dobbs, with dreary and tragic coldness. "I just want to do right. I admit I've done wrong. But what I've done, I've done in ignorance. I didn't know it would be against your reputation for me to come here constant, and to take you on the river, and go with you to the theater and the Coliseum." "No, I don't suppose you did," said Cora, holding her hand very carefully now that he had been such a fool as to put a weapon in it. "No, I suppose not, Mr. Harper." The "Mr." was stressed very slightly, but she felt him flinch a little. "Well, Miss Cora," he said huskily, "it's like this. I just want to do right by you as any other gentleman would." "Oh, do you, Mr. Harper." She fixed him with the eye of a basilisk. "Yes," he said, and the sweat broke out on his forehead. "Whatever it's got to be."