o; and what else was there for me to tell him?
To betray Catherine and the secret of my presence, would simply hasten
an irrevocable step. To betray Mrs. Lascelles, and _her_ secret, would
certainly not prevent one. Both courses were out of the question upon
other grounds. Yet what else was left?

To speak out boldly to Mrs. Lascelles, to betray Catherine and myself to
her?

I shrank from that; nor had I any right to reveal a secret which was
not only mine. What then was I to do? Here was this lad professedly on
the point of proposing to this woman. It was useless to speak to the
lad; it was impossible to speak to the woman. To be sure, she might not
accept him; but the mere knowledge that she was to have the chance
seemed enormously to increase my responsibility in the matter. As for
the dilemma in which I now found myself, deservedly as you please, there
was no comparing it with any former phase of this affair.

"O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!"

The hackneyed lines sprang unbidden, as though to augment my punishment;
then suddenly I reflected that it was not in my own interest I had begun
to practise my deceit; and the thought of Catherine braced me up,
perhaps partly because I felt that it should. I put myself back into the
fascinating little room in Elm Park Gardens. I saw the slender figure in
the picture hat, I heard the half-humorous and half-pathetic voice.
After all, it was for Catherine I had undertaken this ridiculous
mission; she was therefore my first and had much better be my only
consideration. I could not run with the hare after hunting with the
hounds. And I should like to have seen Catherine's face if I had
expressed any sympathy with the hare!

No; it was better to be unscrupulously stanch to one woman than weakly
chivalrous toward both; and my mind was made up by the end of dinner.
There was only one chance now of saving the wretched Bob, or rather one
way of setting to work to save him; and that was by actually adopting
the course with which he had already credited me. He thought I was
"trying to cut him out." Well, I would try!

But the more I thought of him, of Mrs. Lascelles, of them both, the less
sanguine I felt of success; for had I been she (I could not help
admitting it to myself), as lonely, as reckless, as unlucky, I would
have married the dear young idiot on the spot. Not that my own marriage
(with Mrs. Lascelles) was an end that I contemplat