"You are corresponding with that old woman now?"

"What do you know about my correspondence?"

"I know just what you told me. That letter there is from the lady
with the Italian name. She has more mischief even than you have, I
believe." At hearing this Sir Francis only laughed. "If you don't
take care she'll make you marry her, and then where will you be?"

"Where would you be, old fellow?"

"It don't much matter where I should be," said poor Dick. "There's
a revolver up-stairs and I sometimes think that I had better use
it. I've nothing but myself to look after. I've no baronetcy and no
estate, and can destroy none but myself. You can't hurt me very much.
I'll tell you what it is, Geraldine. You want a wife so that you may
cut out your cousin from the property. You're a good-looking fellow
and you can talk, and, as chance would have it, you had, I imagine,
got hold of a true lady. But she found you out."

"What did she find out?"

"The sort of fellow that you are. She met you among the Dean's
people, and had to find you out before she knew you. However she did
before it was too late, and she gave you the sack."

"That's your idea."

"She did," said Dick boldly. "And there should have been an end of
it. I don't say but what it might have been as well for you as for
her. But it suited you to have your revenge, and you've had it."

"I rather think I have," said Sir Francis.

"But you've got a woman to help you in getting it who seems to have
been as spiteful as you, without any excuse. I shouldn't think that
she'd make a good wife. But if you don't take care she'll be yours."
Then Dick got up and walked out of the room with his pipe in his
mouth, and went into his bedroom, thinking that it might be as well
for him to pack up and take his departure. The quarters they were in
were, as he declared to himself, "beastly" in wet weather; but his
shirts hadn't come from the wash, and he had no vehicle to take him
to the railway station without sending for a fly. And after all what
he had said to Sir Francis was not much worse than what had often
been said before. So he chucked off his slippers, and threw himself
upon the bed, thinking that he might as well endeavour to get through
the morning by going to sleep.

Sir Francis when he found himself alone began to think over all the
circumstances of his present position. Among those circumstances
Dick Ross was one. When he had intended to marry Miss Holt he had
deter