'Oh! not very far off. Housekeeper to a certain person, unmarried of course.' 'Which?' 'Oh! both.' A pause――Mr. Holwood felt in his pocket for his latchkey. 'A――clergyman, I hope?' 'Bless your soul, a seafaring fellow, a dissolute dog, been a smuggler――mixed up in――but, ahem!――you are in the Government.' 'No, not exactly,――in the Foreign Office. You――you don't mean to imply――――' 'Never stir in dirty ponds or you wake bad smells. What can you expect? What is born in the bone comes out in the flesh.' The gentleman put his latchkey back in his pocket, folded his hands between his knees, and looked down with a troubled face on the floor; his feeble underlip quivered, and his chin went back as though inclined to dive into and conceal itself in the neckcloth. 'I am very unhappy about this. I――I feel a sort of responsibility in the matter. But, my dear Mr. Dench, what am I to do? Consider how I am placed. I am a gentleman and well connected. My people are tolerably high in life, and I have a Government situation. It may lead――there is no saying to what it may lead. It is a position that necessitates my taking a place in the fashionable world. That single indiscretion in early youth weighs like a millstone attached to my neck. I try to forget, to make light of it. I cannot. The possible consequences are ever before me, and just now anything approaching to a _dénoûment_ would be fatal.' 'Then why the deuce did you come here and risk all?' 'That is just what I――I ask myself――you know how one feels on the edge of a precipice, an irresistible desire to cast one's self down. I really could not help myself. I felt that I must come here and see and hear how matters stand, so as to take my social――my moral bearings――from circumstances. I would do what is right――strictly honourable and right――but I don't want to hurt my prospects. One must always look to one's prospects in the regulation of conduct,――moral conduct, you understand. A thing cannot be right which hurts one――can it?' He put up his eyeglass. 'I ask you as a moralist.' 'My dear sir,' answered the boatman, 'you leave all to me. I am your man, devoted body and soul. No one else knows all the ins and outs as I do. Leave me to manage for you.' 'You have always paid her the annuity in quarterly instalments, or monthly, if preferred. I sent it you quarterly.' 'Regular as the tides.' 'You tell me that she has asked to have it increased. I cannot say but there may be some reason in this, nevertheless I want to be assured that there are to be no undue exactions which might become insupportable.' He dropped his glass. 'It shall go no further.'