Still half asleep, Tom hurried down-stairs, and in the hall, with a shock, read the address, "Cleve Verney, Esq." At the hall-door steps he found a cab, into which he jumped, telling the man to drive to Cleve Verney's lodgings. There were expiring lights in the drawing-room, the blinds of which were up, and as the cab stopped at the steps a figure appeared at one of the windows, and Cleve Verney opened it, and told the driver, "Don't mind knocking, I'll go down." "Come up-stairs," said Cleve, as he stood at the open door, addressing Sedley, and mistaking him for the person whom he had employed. Up ran Tom Sedley at his heels. "Hollo! _Sedley_--what brings _you_ here?" said Cleve, when Tom appeared in the light of the candles. "You don't mean to say the ball has been going on till now--or is it a scrape?" "Nothing--only this I've been commissioned to give you," and he placed Miss Sheckleton's note in his hand. Cleve had looked wofully haggard and anxious as Tom entered. But his countenance changed now to an ashy paleness, and there was no mistaking his extreme agitation. He opened the note--a very brief one it seemed--and read it. "Thank God!" he said with a great sigh, and then he walked to the window and looked out, and returned again to the candles and read the note once more. "How did you know I was up, Tom?" "The lights in the windows." "Yes. Don't let the cab go." Cleve was getting on his coat, and speaking like a man in a dream. "I say, Tom Sedley, how did _you_ come by this note?" he said, with a sudden pause, and holding Miss Sheckleton's note in his fingers. "Well, quite innocently," hesitated Sedley. "How the devil was it, sir? Come, you may as well--by heaven, Sedley, you _shall_ tell me the truth!" Tom looked on his friend Cleve, and saw his eyes gleaming sharply on him, and his face very white. "Of course I'll tell you, Cleve," said Tom, and with this exordium he stumbled honestly through his story, which by no means quieted Cleve Verney. "You d----d little Paul Pry!" said he. "Well, you have got hold of a secret now, like the man in the iron mask, and by----you had better keep it." A man who half blames himself already, and is in a position which he hates and condemns, will stand a great deal more of hard language, and even of execration, than he would under any other imaginable circumstances. "You can't blame me half as much as I do myself. I assure you, Cleve, I'm awfully sorry. It was the merest lark--at first--and then--when I saw that beautiful--that young lady--" "Don't talk of that lady any more; I'm her husband. _There_, you have it all, and if you whisper it to mortal you _may ruin_ me; but one or other of us shall die for it!" Cleve was talking in a state of positive exasperation.