speak to me in the street, and I told him what I thought
about his writing to you." On hearing this Emily looked very
wretched. "I could not restrain myself from doing that. Come;--you
must admit that he shouldn't have written."

"He meant it in kindness."

"Then he shouldn't have meant it. Just think of it. Suppose that I
had been making up to any girl,--which by-the-by I never did but to
one in my life,"--then he put his arm round her waist and kissed her,
"and she were to have married some one else. What would have been
said of me if I had begun to correspond with her immediately? Don't
suppose I am blaming you, dear."

"Certainly I do not suppose that," said Emily.

"But you must admit that it were rather strong." He paused, but she
said nothing. "Only I suppose you can bring yourself to admit nothing
against him. However, so it was. There was a row, and a policeman
came up, and they made me give a promise that I didn't mean to shoot
him or anything of that kind." As she heard this she turned pale, but
said nothing. "Of course I didn't want to shoot him. I wished him to
know what I thought about it, and I told him. I hate to trouble you
with all this, but I couldn't bear that you shouldn't know it all."

"It is very sad!"

"Sad enough! I have had plenty to bear, I can tell you. Everybody
seemed to turn away from me there. Everybody deserted me." As he said
this he could perceive that he must obtain her sympathy by recounting
his own miseries and not Arthur Fletcher's sins. "I was all alone
and hardly knew how to hold up my head against so much wretchedness.
And then I found myself called upon to pay an enormous sum for my
expenses."

"Oh, Ferdinand!"

"Think of their demanding L500!"

"Did you pay it?"

"Yes, indeed. I had no alternative. Of course they took care to
come for that before they talked of my resigning. I believe it was
all planned beforehand. The whole thing seems to me to have been a
swindle from beginning to end. By heaven, I'm almost inclined to
think that the Duchess knew all about it herself!"

"About the L500!"

"Perhaps not the exact sum, but the way in which the thing was to be
done. In these days one doesn't know whom to trust. Men, and women
too, have become so dishonest that nobody is safe anywhere. It has
been awfully hard upon me,--awfully hard. I don't suppose that there
was ever a moment in my life when the loss of L500 would have been so
much to me as it is now. The que