nutes' conversation they walked
away together.

Emma sat up till twelve o'clock. The thought on which she was brooding
was not one to make the time go lightly; it was--how much and how
various evil can be wrought by a single act of treachery. And the
instance in her mind was more fruitful than her knowledge allowed her to
perceive.

Kate appeared shortly after midnight. She had very red cheeks and very
bright eyes, and her mood was quarrelsome. She sat down on the bed
and began to talk of Daniel Dabbs, as she had often done already, in a
maundering way. Emma kept silence; she was beginning to undress.

'There's a man with money,' said Kate, her voice getting louder; 'money,
I tell you, and you've only to say a word. And you won't even be civil
to him. You've got no feeling; you don't care for nobody but yourself.
I'll take the children and leave you to go your own way, that's what
I'll do!'

It was hard to make no reply, but Emma succeeded in commanding herself.
The maundering talk went on for more than an hour. Then came the
wretched silence of night.

Emma did not sleep. She was too wobegone to find a tear. Life stood
before her in the darkness like a hideous spectre.

In the morning she told her sister that Daniel had asked her to marry
him and that she had refused. It was best to have that understood. Kate
heard with black brows. But even yet she knew something of shame when
she remembered her return home the night before; it kept her from giving
utterance to her anger.

There followed a scene such as had occurred two or three times during
the past six months. Emma threw aside all her coldness, and with
passionate entreaty besought her sister to draw back from the gulf's
edge whilst there was yet time. For her own sake, for the sake of Bertie
and the little girl, by the memory of that dear dead one who lay in the
waste cemetery!

'Pity me, too! Think a little of me, Kate dear! You are driving me to
despair.'

Kate was moved, she had not else been human. The children were looking
up with frightened, wondering eyes. She hid her face and muttered
promises of amendment.

Emma kissed her, and strove hard to hope.

CHAPTER XXXI

With his five hundred pounds lodged in the bank, Mutimer felt ill at
ease in the lodgings in Pentonville. He began to look bout for an abode
more suitable to the dignity of his position, and shortly discovered
a house in Holloway, the rent twenty-eight pounds, the situatio