saw this page in my diary! I have had a
letter from her this morning--a letter to remind me of my obligations,
and to tell me she suspects things are all going wrong. Let her suspect!
I shan't trouble myself to answer; I can't be worried with that old
wretch in the state I am in now.

"It is a lovely afternoon--I want a walk--I mustn't think of Midwinter.
Suppose I put on my bonnet, and try my experiment at once at the great
house? Everything is in my favor. There is no spy to follow me, and no
lawyer to keep me out, this time. Am I handsome enough, to-day? Well,
yes; handsome enough to be a match for a little dowdy, awkward, freckled
creature, who ought to be perched on a form at school, and strapped to a
backboard to straighten her crooked shoulders.

"'The nursery lisps out in all they utter;
Besides, they always smell of bread-and-butter.'

"How admirably Byron has described girls in their teens!"

"Eight o'clock.--I have just got back from Armadale's house. I have seen
him, and spoken to him; and the end of it may be set down in three plain
words. I have failed. There is no more chance of my being Mrs. Armadale
of Thorpe Ambrose than there is of my being Queen of England.

"Shall I write and tell Oldershaw? Shall I go back to London? Not till I
have had time to think a little. Not just yet.

"Let me think; I have failed completely--failed, with all the
circumstances in favor of success. I caught him alone on the drive in
front of the house. He was excessively disconcerted, but at the same
time quite willing to hear me. I tried him, first quietly--then with
tears, and the rest of it. I introduced myself in the character of the
poor innocent woman whom he had been the means of injuring. I confused,
I interested, I convinced him. I went on to the purely Christian part
of my errand, and spoke with such feeling of his separation from his
friend, for which I was innocently responsible, that I turned his odious
rosy face quite pale, and made him beg me at last not to distress him.
But, whatever other feelings I roused in him, I never once roused his
old feeling for _me_. I saw it in his eyes when he looked at me; I felt
it in his fingers when we shook hands. We parted friends, and nothing
more.

"It is for this, is it, Miss Milroy, that I resisted temptation, morning
after morning, when I knew you were out alone in the park? I have just
left you time to slip in, and take my place in Armadale's good graces,