begs to assure
him that it will not now be possible that he should renew the
relations which were broken off three years ago, between him and Mrs
Dale's family." It was very short, certainly, and it did not by any
means satisfy Mrs. Dale. But she did not know how to say more without
saying too much. The object of her letter was to save him the trouble
of a futile perseverance, and them from the annoyance of persecution;
and this she wished to do without mentioning her daughter's name. And
she was determined that no word should escape her in which there was
any touch of severity, any hint of an accusation. So much she owed to
Lily in return for all that Lily was prepared to abandon. "There is
my note," she said at last, offering it to her daughter. "I did not
mean to see it," said Lily, "and, mamma, I will not read it now. Let
it go. I know you have been good and have not scolded him." "I have
not scolded him, certainly," said Mrs. Dale. And then the letter was
sent.

CHAPTER XXIV

Mrs. Dobbs Broughton's Dinner-party

Mr. John Eames of the Income-tax Office, had in these days risen so
high in the world that people in the west-end of town, and very
respectable people too,--people living in South Kensington, in
neighbourhoods not far from Belgravia, and in very handsome houses
round Bayswater,--were glad to ask him out to dinner. Money had been
left to him by an earl, and rumour had of course magnified that
money. He was a private secretary, which is in itself a great advance
on being a mere clerk. And he had become the particularly intimate
friend of an artist who had pushed himself into high fashion during
the last year or two,--one Conway Dalrymple, whom the rich English
world was beginning to pet and pelt with gilt sugar-plums, and who
seemed to take very kindly to petting and gilt sugar-plums. I don't
know whether the friendship of Conway Dalrymple had not done as much
to secure John Eames his position at the Bayswater dinner-tables, as
had either the private secretaryship, or the earl's money; and yet,
when they had first known each other, now only two or three years
ago, Conway Dalrymple had been the poorer man of the two. Some chance
had brought them together, and they had lived in the same rooms for
nearly two years. This arrangement had been broken up, and the Conway
Dalrymple of these days had a studio of his own, somewhere near
Kensington Palace, where he painted portraits of young countesses,
and