I must admit that the sight of the sweet chit was the one thing in all the world that had the power to please me at that hour, yet there was not a thing that could have happened to leave me in so sore a case. Here had my prettiness come and thrown herself on my protection--on the protection of a man utterly ruined, whom the law was already dogging for his liberty, if not his life. In sooth I must send her back again. It was no sort of a reception, especially when one fell to consider the heroical fashion of her coming to me. But what else was one to do? I was at my last gasp, without so much as a guinea, or a roof for my head, since to stay in that house was to court arrest, nor had I a friend in the world to whom I would dare to recommend her. "Cynthia," says I, "I dote upon the sight of you; I am filled with joy to see you sitting there, but--but----" How could I tell the child! "But--but?" She sobbed no more. Mopping her tears, she crumpled the sopping handkerchief in her little fist, sat perfectly upright in her seat, and stared so straight at me that I felt the blood hum in my ears. "But--but!" says I again--devil take me if I could tell her. "But--but?" says she on her part; and it was wonderful to see her blue eyes come open and her proud lips spring together like the snap of a watch-case. "Well, Cynthia, dear, it is simply this," says I, going headlong into it. "You find me a ruined gamester, without a friend or a guinea in the world, who even at this moment is being hunted for his debts, and, if I dared say it to you, something worse. Now there is but one way out of it. You cannot stay here; there is not a friend to whom I may confide you; child, you must go back to your father." Instead of growing red, the colour that shone I am sure in my face, she grew as pale as snow, and her eyes sparkled with a grim beauty that discomposed me more than it charmed me. She rose from the couch, lifted her chin out of her white throat, and kicked the kings and queens and knaves on the carpet in all directions. "Never," she cried. "I will not go back to my father. I said I would not marry this Mr. Waring; whereon my lord said he would lock me in my room until I was of another mind. And he did lock me in it; and I broke out of it; and I will not go back, no, not if I must subsist on crusts picked from the kennel, and the clothes rot off my body, and I sleep o' nights in a dry ditch or the porch of a church." "Faith!" says I, "that's well spoke, monstrous well spoke." "I hate this Mr. Waring," says the little fury. "May I be crost in love, if I do not." "And if I do not too," says I, "may my heart smoke in purgatory. But come tell me, is it for himself you hate him, or is it for love of me?" "A plague take all catechisms," says she. "But I will tell you for another kiss."