n pull
himself, I should say, out of a worse hole."

"There's scarcely a bad habit I haven't had down in the hole with me,"
confessed the other, "and they've held me there."

They both remained for a few seconds without speaking, and the host's
eyes wandered to where, over his mantel-shelf, in a great gold frame
was the portrait of a lady done by Baker. A quaint young lady in her
early teens, with bare arms and frilled frock. She had Bulstrode's
eyes. By her side was the black muzzle of a great hound, on whose head
the little hand rested. Under the picture, from a silver bowl of
roses, came a fragrance that filled the room, and, close by stood a
photograph of another lady, very modern, very mocking, and very lovely.

Bulstrode, delicately drawing inferences from the influences in his
life, and, if not consciously grateful, reflecting them charmingly,
broke the silence:

"You must have formed some plan or other in your mind when you came to
my door? What, in the event of your being received, did you intend to
ask me to do?"

The stranger lifted his head and his response was irrelevant: "It seems
a hundred years since I stood there in that storm and your man pulled
me in. I haven't seen a place like this for long, not the inside of
decent houses. When I left the ship I managed to get down with a chap
as far as Florida, where he had an orange-plantation, but the venture
fell through. I fancy the rest is as well forgotten. When I came in
here to-night I intended to ask you for a Christmas gift of money, and
I should have gone out and drunk myself to hell."

"You spoke"--Bulstrode fetched him back--"of your father and your
brother; was there no one else?"

The younger man looked up without reply.

"There has been, then, no more kindly influence in your life--no
sister--no woman?"

Bulstrode brought out the words; in his judgment they meant so very
much. He saw a change cross the other's face.

"I fancy there are not many men who haven't had a woman in their lives
for good or bad," he said, with a short laugh.

"Well," urged the gentleman, gently, "and for what was this woman?"

As if he repelled the insistence, the young fellow stammered:

"I say, this putting a fellow on the rack----"

But Bulstrode leaned forward in his chair and rested his hand on his
companion's knee and pleaded:

"Speak out frankly--frankly--I believe I shall understand; it will free
your heart to speak. This influence whic