in honor toward other people to keep the particulars
of this business to myself."

Pedgift Junior had apparently heard enough for his purpose. He drew
his chair, in his turn, nearer to Allan. He was evidently anxious and
embarrassed; but his professional manner began to show itself again from
sheer force of habit.

"I've done with my questions, sir," he said; "and I have something to
say now on my side. In my father's absence, perhaps you may be kindly
disposed to consider me as your legal adviser. If you will take my
advice, you will not stir another step in this inquiry."

"What do you mean?" interposed Allan.

"It is just possible, Mr. Armadale, that the cabman, positive as he is,
may have been mistaken. I strongly recommend you to take it for granted
that he _is_ mistaken, and to drop it there."

The caution was kindly intended; but it came too late. Allan did what
ninety-nine men out of a hundred in his position would have done--he
declined to take his lawyer's advice.

"Very well, sir," said Pedgift Junior; "if you will have it, you must
have it."

He leaned forward close to Allan's ear, and whispered what he had heard
of the house in Pimlico, and of the people who occupied it.

"Don't blame me, Mr. Armadale," he added, when the irrevocable words had
been spoken. "I tried to spare you."

Allan suffered the shock, as all great shocks are suffered, in silence.
His first impulse would have driven him headlong for refuge to that very
view of the cabman's assertion which had just been recommended to him,
but for one damning circumstance which placed itself inexorably in his
way. Miss Gwilt's marked reluctance to approach the story of her
past life rose irrepressibly on his memory, in indirect but horrible
confirmation of the evidence which connected Miss Gwilt's reference with
the house in Pimlico. One conclusion, and one only--the conclusion which
any man must have drawn, hearing what he had just heard, and knowing
no more than he knew--forced itself into his mind. A miserable, fallen
woman, who had abandoned herself in her extremity to the help of
wretches skilled in criminal concealment, who had stolen her way back to
decent society and a reputable employment by means of a false character,
and whose position now imposed on her the dreadful necessity of
perpetual secrecy and perpetual deceit in relation to her past
life--such was the aspect in which the beautiful governess at Thorpe
Ambrose now stood revea