Foretdechene by the earliest train to-morrow morning, on the first
stage of your journey to England. Look here, my girl! I can give you
just about the money that will carry you safely to London; and when you
are once there, Providence must do the rest."

"Valentine, what do you mean?"

"I mean, that you cannot get away from this place--you cannot dissever
yourself from the people you have been living with, too soon. Come,
come, don't shiver, child. Take a few drops of this cognac, and let me
see the colour come back to your face before I say any more."

He poured the dregs of a bottle of brandy into a glass, and made her
drink the spirit. He was obliged to force the rim of the glass between
her set teeth before he could succeed in this.

"Come, Diana," he said, after she had drunk, "you have been a pupil in
the school of adversity so long, that you ought to be able to take
misfortunes pretty quietly. There's a balance struck, somehow or other,
depend upon it, my girl; and the prosperous people who pay their debts
have to suffer, as well as the Macaire family. I'm a scamp and a
scoundrel, but I'm your true friend nevertheless, Diana; and you must
promise to take my advice. Tell me that you will trust me."

"I have no one else to trust."

"No one else in this place. But in England you have your old
friend,--the woman with whom you were at school. Do you think she would
refuse to give you a temporary home if you sued to her _in forma
pauperis?_"

"No, I don't think she would refuse. She was very good to me. But why
am I to go back to London?"

"Because to stay here would be ruin and disgrace to you; because the
tie that links you to Horatio Paget must be cut at any hazard." "But
why?"

"For the best or worst of reasons. Your father has been trying a trick
to-night which has been hitherto so infallible, that I suppose he had
grown careless as to his execution of it. Or perhaps he took a false
measure of the man he was playing with. In any case, he has been found
out, and has been arrested by the police."

"Arrested, for cheating at cards!" exclaimed the girl, with a look of
unspeakable disgust and horror. Valentine's arm was ready to support
her, if she had shown any symptom of fainting; but she did not. She
stood erect before him, very pale but firm as a rock.

"And you want me to go away?" she said.

"Yes, I want you to disappear from this place before you become
notorious as your father's daughter. That