himself with
mortification; and felt angry with her for bringing him into such
ignominy. In the back parlour once more, he took up his hat at once.

"You mustn't go yet," whispered Harriet. "I'm sure that woman's
listening on the stairs. You must talk a little. Let's talk so she can
hear us. Suppose she should tell Mrs. Ogle."

"I can't see that it matters," said Julian, with annoyance. "I will
myself see Mrs. Ogle."

"No, no! The idea! I should have to leave at once. Whatever shall I do
if she turns me away, and won't give me a reference or anything!"

Even in a calmer mood, Julian's excessive delicacy would have presented
an affair of this kind in a grave light to him; at present he was
wholly incapable of distinguishing between true and false, or of
gauging these fears at their true value. The mere fact of the girl
making so great a matter out of what should have been so easy to
explain and have done with, caused an exaggeration of the difficulty in
his own mind. He felt that he ought of course to justify himself before
Mrs. Ogle, and would have been capable of doing so had only Harriet
taken the same sensible view; but her apparent distress seemed--even to
him--so much more like conscious guilt than troubled innocence, that
such a task would cost him the acutest suffering. For nearly an hour he
argued with her, trying to convince her how impossible it was that the
woman who had surprised them should harbour any injurious suspicions.

"But she knows--" began Harriet, and then stopped, her eyes falling.

"What does she know?" demanded her cousin in surprise; but could get no
reply to his question. However, his arguments seemed at length to have
a calming effect, and, as he took leave, he even affected to laugh at
the whole affair. For all that, he had never suffered such mental
trouble in his life as during this visit and throughout the evening
which followed. The mere thought of having been obliged to discuss such
things with his cousin filled him with inexpressible shame and misery.
Waymark came to spend the evening with him, but found poor
entertainment. Several times Julian was on the point of relating what
had happened, and asking for advice, but he found it impossible to
broach the subject. There was an ever-recurring anger against Harriet
in his mind, too, for which at the same time he reproached himself. He
dreaded the next meeting between them.

Harriet, though herself quite innocent of fine feeling a