e, at least, he lived as seemed best in his own eyes, and was
happy.

When he was in England he still occasionally visited Thorley; and it was
thus that Milly Harrington came to know him by sight. Her grandmother
did not know the Bundlecombes, but Milly came to the conclusion that
Alan was their son, and this was the tale which she had told to Sydney
Campion, and which Sydney had repeated to his sister.

The last visit paid by Alan to Thorley was some time after his uncle's
death, and he had then confided to his aunt the story of his marriage,
and of its unfortunate sequel. He happened to have learned that the man
with whom he had fought at Aix-les-Bains was back in London, and it
seemed not improbable at that moment that he would soon hear news of his
fugitive wife. When he mentioned this to the widow--who was already
taking steps to sell her stock-in-trade--she immediately conceived the
idea that her boy, as she called Alan, was in imminent danger, that the
wife would undoubtedly turn up again, and that it was absolutely
necessary for his personal safety that he should have an intrepid and
watchful woman living in the same house with him. So she proposed the
arrangement which now existed, and Alan had equably fallen in with her
plan. He did not see much of her when she came to London, and there was
very little in their tastes which was congenial or compatible; but she
kept him straight in the matter of his weekly bills and his laundress,
and he had no desire to quarrel with the way in which she managed these
affairs for him.

When Alan came home after his call at the Grahams', weary and
disconsolate, with a weight on his mind of which he could not rid
himself, the door was opened by his aunt. Her white face startled him,
and still more the gesture with which she pointed upstairs, in the
direction of their rooms. His heart sank at once, for he knew that the
worst had befallen him.

"Hush!" said his aunt in a hoarse whisper, "do not go up. She is there.
She came in the morning and would not go away."

"How is she? I mean what does she look like?"

He was very quiet; but he had leaned both hands upon the hall table, and
was gazing at his aunt with despairing eyes.

"Bad, my boy, bad! The worst that a woman can look, Oh, Alan, go away,
and do not come near her. Fly, immediately, anywhere out of her reach!
Let me tell her that you have gone to the other end of the world rather
than touch her again. Oh, Alan, my sis