er's on his own shoulders? Eve's piteous cry of
"Philip!" at his entry recurred to her--the intimate nature of her
appeal. The scent was promising; but it opened out vistas of a
loyalty too fantastic and generous to be true. Her mature cynicism
of a girl of the people, disillusioned and abused, flouted the idea.
Did she not know "gentlemen" and the nature of their love? The girl
was hardened by ill-usage, bitter from long brooding over her
shame. She was glad when he turned to her at last, breaking a
silence which the sullen roar of London outside and beyond them, the
dreary rattling of the cab, seemed only to heighten, with a sudden
gesture of despair.

"If I had only known! If you had only told me two years ago!"

The suppressed passion in his voice, his air, terrified the girl.
She bent forward trembling.

"Ah! what have I done, what have I done?" she moaned. "How did I
know that it would all come like this? I meant no harm, sir. He
persuaded me to deceive you after I had found out who he really was,
to put you off the scent, keeping his name a secret. He said he had
a right to ask that. He told me he was married, though he wasn't
then. And afterwards he made me move, when you were abroad: he
wanted my address not to be known. That was the condition he made of
his seeing after the child; he swore he would provide for her then,
and bring her up like a lady. And he sent me the money for a bit
pretty regular. Oh, it was only for her sake, I promise you that! I
wouldn't have touched a brass farthing for myself. But, after all,
she _was_ his child. And then, somehow or other, the money didn't
come. He went away--he was away all the summer--and he said he had
so many calls on him, such expenses."

"Ah, the scoundrel!" cried Rainham, between his set teeth.

The girl took him up, hardly with an echo of his own resentment,
rather with a sort of crushed directness, as one who acknowledged a
bare fact, making no comment, merely admitting the obscure
dreariness of things.

"Yes; he was a scoundrel. He was bad all along. I think he has no
heart. And he has made me bad too. I was a good enough girl of old,
before I knew him. Only something came over me to-night when I found
_her_ there, with that big house and the servants, and all that
luxury, and thought how he couldn't spare a few pounds to bring his
own child up decent. Oh, I was vile to-night. I frightened her.
Perhaps it was best as it happened. It dazed her. She'll