escort you
to the house if you are not."

"Quite strong enough now. Thank you once again."

As he was bowing his farewell, a sudden impulse to speak, and set the
matter that was troubling her at rest, came over her. Without a moment's
deliberation, without weighing her words, she rushed upon it; the
ostensible plea an apology for her mother's having spoken to him.

"Yes, I told Lady Kirton she was labouring under some misapprehension,"
he quietly answered.

"Will you forgive _me_ also for speaking of it?" she murmured. "Since my
mother came home with the news of what you said, I have been lost in a
sea of conjecture: I could not attend to the service for dwelling upon
it, and might as well not have been in church--a curious confession to
make to you, Dr. Ashton. Is it indeed true that you know nothing of
the matter?"

"Lady Kirton told me in so many words that I had entered an action
against Lord Hartledon for breach of promise, and laid the damages at ten
thousand pounds," returned Dr. Ashton, with a plainness of speech and a
cynical manner that made her blush. And she saw at once that he had done
nothing of the sort; saw it without any more decisive denial.

"But the action has been entered," said Lady Hartledon.

"I beg your pardon, madam. Lord Hartledon is, I should imagine, the only
man living who could suppose me capable of such a thing."

"And you have _not_ entered on it!" she reiterated, half bewildered by
the denial.

"Most certainly not. When I parted with Lord Hartledon on a certain
evening, which probably your ladyship remembers, I washed my hands of him
for good, desiring never to approach him in any way whatever, never hear
of him, never see him again. Your husband, madam, is safe for me: I
desire nothing better than to forget that such a man is in existence."

Lifting his hat, he walked away. And Lady Hartledon stood and gazed after
him as one in a dream.

CHAPTER XXIII.

MR. CARR AT WORK.

Thomas Carr was threading his way through the mazy precincts of Gray's
Inn, with that quick step and absorbed manner known only, I think, to the
busy man of our busy metropolis. He was on his way to make some inquiries
of a firm of solicitors, Messrs. Kedge and Reck, strangers to him in all
but name.

Up some dark and dingy stairs, he knocked at a dark and dingy door:
which, after a minute, opened of itself by some ingenious contrivance,
and let him into a passage, whence he turned into a ro