cretion. I must
suppose that you know what you are about.'

'Yes, I think I do. The story is unexciting. I am not a romantic
person, nor is my future wife. Now, you must know that when I was about
twenty-three years old I fell in love. You never suspected me of that,
I dare say?'

'Why not?'

'Well, I did fall in love. The lady was a clergyman's daughter at
Hereford, where I had a place in a school; she taught the infants in an
elementary school connected with ours; her age was exactly the same as
my own. Now, the remarkable thing was that she took a liking for me,
and when I was scoundrel enough to tell her of my feeling, she didn't
reject me.'

'Scoundrel enough? Why scoundrel?'

'Why? But I hadn't a penny in the world. I lived at the school, and
received a salary of thirty pounds, half of which had to go towards the
support of my mother. What could possibly have been more villainous?
What earthly prospect was there of my being able to marry?'

'Well, grant the monstrosity of it.'

'This lady--a very little lower than the angels--declared that she was
content to wait an indefinite time. She believed in me, and hoped for
my future. Her father--the mother was dead--sanctioned our engagement.
She had three sisters, one of them a governess, another keeping house,
and the third a blind girl. Excellent people, all of them. I was at
their house as often as possible, and they made much of me. It was a
pity, you know, for in those few leisure hours I ought to have been
working like a nigger.'

'Plainly you ought.'

'Fortunately, I left Hereford, and went to a school at Gloucester,
where I had thirty-five pounds. How we gloried over that extra five
pounds! But it's no use going on with the story in this way; it would
take me till to-morrow morning. Seven years went by; we were thirty
years old, and no prospect whatever of our engagement coming to
anything. I had worked pretty hard; I had taken my London degree; but
not a penny had I saved, and all I could spare was still needful to my
mother. It struck me all at once that I had no right to continue the
engagement. On my thirtieth birthday I wrote a letter to Fanny--that is
her name--and begged her to be free. Now, would you have done the same,
or not?'

'Really, I am not imaginative enough to put myself in such a position.
It would need a stupendous effort, at all events.'

'But was there anything gross in the proceeding?'

'The lady took it ill?'

'Not in th