head. He'll break
hers. He's a mean brute, too. She can't know him, though he has
been after her this year and more. They must have forced her into
it. Ah! it's a bitter business," and he put his head between his
hands, and East heard the deep catches of his laboring breath, as
he sat by him, feeling deeply for him, but puzzled what to say.

"She can't be worth so much after all, Tom," he said at last, "if
she would have such a fellow as that. Depend upon it, she's not
what you thought her."

Tom made no answer; so the captain went on presently, thinking he
had hit the right note.

"Cheer up, old boy. There's as good fish in the sea yet as ever
came out of it. Don't you remember the song--whose is it?
Lovelace's:--

"'If she be not fair for me,
What care I for whom she be?'"

Tom started up almost fiercely, but recovered himself in a
moment, and then leant his head down again.

"Don't talk about her, Harry; you don't know her," he said.

"And don't want to know her, Tom, if she is going to throw you
over. Well, I shall leave you for an hour or so. Come up to me
presently at the Rag, when you feel better."

East started for his club, debating within himself what he could
do for his friend--whether calling out the party mightn't do
good.

Tom, left to himself, broke down at first sadly; but, as the
evening wore on he began to rally, and sat down and wrote a long
letter to his father, making a clean breast, and asking his
permission to go with East.

CHAPTER XLIX

THE END

My Dear Katie;--I know you will be very much pained when you read
this letter. You two have been my only confidantes, and you have
always kept me up, and encouraged me to hope that all would come
right. And after all that happened last week, Patty's marriage,
and your engagement,--the two things upon earth, with one
exception, that I most wished for,--I quite felt that my own turn
was coming. I can't tell why I had such a strong feeling about
it, but somehow all the most important changes in my life for the
last four years have been so interwoven with Patty and Harry
Winburn's history, that, now they were married, I was sure
something would happen to me as soon as I came to London. And I
was not wrong. Dear Katie, I can hardly bring myself to write it.
It is all over. I met her in the street to-day; she was riding
with her father and the man I told you about. They had to pull up
not to ride over me; so I had a good look a