if we are to
carry through this affair. She's half suspicious as it is."

"It was your own fault, George. How could you be so foolish as to blurt
out what you did before her?"

"Good Lord, I never gave her a thought. However, I'll be more careful in
future. Well, now, now she's gone, what do you say? How did it go off?
How did I do? Do you think--eh?"

"I did not exaggerate, did I, George?"

"Exaggerate? You did not come up to the mark. She's a ripper. And I
suppose the tin's all right? There's no mistake about _that_?
Because--well, I needn't tell you how things are with me."

"I know--of course. And of course I'd never have asked you to come and
meet Leonore Stubbs unless I knew she had been left well off."

"'Well off,' only? I thought you said----"

"Very well off, then. All the neighbourhood rang with the Bolderos' big
marriage, and it was big in no other sense. The poor little thing was
barely grown up and had been nowhere and seen nobody,--and when the
husband died she was received back at the Abbey with open arms."

"It's a wonder she hasn't been snapped up before."

"The Bolderos have taken care of that. They have immured her like a nun.
This is positively the first call she has made here."

"She's awfully pretty." He sighed contentedly.

"And she seemed to get on with you?"

"Famously. Flirty little thing."

"Of course there will be others after her, George. You must lose no
time."

"I haven't time to lose, my good aunt. Poor devils in Stock Exchange
offices can't call their souls their own. I must get back next week.
Luckily I only had a week in August, or I should not have been here
now."

"You poor, ill-used individual! Do you mean that you must actually and
positively return to your slavery at the risk of losing what would
emancipate you from it forever? It can't be, George. It simply must not
be. Your uncle must make up some excuse----"

"My uncle Thomas is a great man on his native heath, no doubt, Aunt
Laura--but he hardly carries the same weight on the Stock Exchange. No,
I must go when the day comes. When Duty calls Love must obey. And it's
no use casting away the substance for the shadow. And--and I could think
of a dozen other wise sayings _a propos_, but it all comes to this, I've
got eight days clear--I'm wound up now like an eight-day clock--and can
make my running steadily till these are out. Then, if----"

"You could come down again?"

"If it were worth it, yes."

He sm