treet, mixing its rays curiously with those from the flaring naphtha
lamps. The town was full of country-people who had come in to enjoy
themselves, and on this account Barnet strolled through the streets
unobserved. With a certain recklessness he made for the harbour-road,
and presently found himself by the shore, where he walked on till he came
to the spot near which his friend the kindly Mrs. Downe had lost her
life, and his own wife's life had been preserved. A tremulous pathway of
bright moonshine now stretched over the water which had engulfed them,
and not a living soul was near.

Here he ruminated on their characters, and next on the young girl in whom
he now took a more sensitive interest than at the time when he had been
free to marry her. Nothing, so far as he was aware, had ever appeared in
his own conduct to show that such an interest existed. He had made it a
point of the utmost strictness to hinder that feeling from influencing in
the faintest degree his attitude towards his wife; and this was made all
the more easy for him by the small demand Mrs. Barnet made upon his
attentions, for which she ever evinced the greatest contempt; thus
unwittingly giving him the satisfaction of knowing that their severance
owed nothing to jealousy, or, indeed, to any personal behaviour of his at
all. Her concern was not with him or his feelings, as she frequently
told him; but that she had, in a moment of weakness, thrown herself away
upon a common burgher when she might have aimed at, and possibly brought
down, a peer of the realm. Her frequent depreciation of Barnet in these
terms had at times been so intense that he was sorely tempted to
retaliate on her egotism by owning that he loved at the same low level on
which he lived; but prudence had prevailed, for which he was now
thankful.

Something seemed to sound upon the shingle behind him over and above the
raking of the wave. He looked round, and a slight girlish shape appeared
quite close to him, He could not see her face because it was in the
direction of the moon.

'Mr. Barnet?' the rambler said, in timid surprise. The voice was the
voice of Lucy Savile.

'Yes,' said Barnet. 'How can I repay you for this pleasure?'

'I only came because the night was so clear. I am now on my way home.'

'I am glad we have met. I want to know if you will let me do something
for you, to give me an occupation, as an idle man? I am sure I ought to
help you, for I know