o her, and
the rules of the game as observed in this stratum of society, gave him
the semblance of flirting--perfidious action, worthy of the miscreant
man in the beginning of a career which at a maturer stage should cover
cruelty and cowardice equalling that of Rooney-Molyneux! Dawn lacked
restraint in her emotional outbursts; the poor girl's state of
nervousness bordered on hysteria; the water was nearly out of her hand
in any case, and with a smack of that irritated divergence from lawful
and decorous conduct of which the sanest of us are at times the
victim, she pitched the dish of greasy, warm water fairly on the
immaculate young athlete, accompanying the action with the
ejaculation--

"That's what you deserve, too!"

"I demand--" he exclaimed, but further utterance was drowned by a
hearty guffaw from Andrew which fully confirmed the outrageous insult.

"Just what I should expect of you," sneered Uncle Jake, while Mr
Rooney-Molyneux, his attention thus diverted from his own affairs,
gazed in watery-eyed surprise at a second victim of the retributive
Dawn.

"Well, that's about what you'd expect from a _thing earning her
living_, but never of a young lady in a _good_ home of her own and
living with _the mother of a family_," said Carry, appearing in time
to witness the accident.

I said nothing to the white-faced girl, for there was more urgent work
to be done in repairing the damage. Hurrying through the house, and
reefing my skirts on the naked rose-bushes under Miss Flipp's window,
where the dead girl's skirts had caught as she went out to die, I
gained a point intercepting Ernest as he strode along the path leading
to the bridge.

"Ernest!"

"You must excuse me to-night," he said, showing that my intervention
was most unwelcome.

"Ernest, if you have any friendship for me, stop. I must speak to you,
and I'm not feeling able for much more to-night."

Thus did I make a lever of my invalidism, and in the gentleness of his
strength he submitted to be detained.

Some men would have covered their annoyance with humorous satire, but
Ernest was not furnished with this weapon. He only had physical
strength, and that could not avail him in such an instance. I placed
my hand on his arm, ostensibly for support, but in reality to be sure
of his detention, and found that he was saturated. Not a pleasant
experience on a frosty night, but there was no danger of it proving
deleterious to one in his present state of