hing?" This was an enquiry that
Dawling was evidently unprepared to meet, and I completed it by saying at
last: "My dear fellow, for that matter, what would become of _you_?"

Once more he turned on me his good green eyes. "Oh I shouldn't mind!"

The tone of his words somehow made his ugly face beautiful, and I
discovered at this moment how much I really liked him. None the less, at
the same time, perversely and rudely, I felt the droll side of our
discussion of such alternatives. It made me laugh out and say to him
while I laughed: "You'd take her even with those things of Mrs.
Meldrum's?"

He remained mournfully grave; I could see that he was surprised at my
rude mirth. But he summoned back a vision of the lady at Folkestone and
conscientiously replied: "Even with those things of Mrs. Meldrum's." I
begged him not to resent my laughter, which but exposed the fact that we
had built a monstrous castle in the air. Didn't he see on what flimsy
ground the structure rested? The evidence was preposterously small. He
believed the worst, but we were really uninformed.

"I shall find out the truth," he promptly replied.

"How can you? If you question her you'll simply drive her to perjure
herself. Wherein after all does it concern you to know the truth? It's
the girl's own affair."

"Then why did you tell me your story?"

I was a trifle embarrassed. "To warn you off," I smiled. He took no
more notice of these words than presently to remark that Lord Iffield had
no serious intentions. "Very possibly," I said. "But you mustn't speak
as if Lord Iffield and you were her only alternatives."

Dawling thought a moment. "Couldn't something be got out of the people
she has consulted? She must have been to people. How else can she have
been condemned?"

"Condemned to what? Condemned to perpetual nippers? Of course she has
consulted some of the big specialists, but she has done it, you may be
sure, in the most clandestine manner; and even if it were supposable that
they would tell you anything--which I altogether doubt--you would have
great difficulty in finding out which men they are. Therefore leave it
alone; never show her what you suspect."

I even before he quitted me asked him to promise me this. "All right, I
promise"--but he was gloomy enough. He was a lover facing the fact that
there was no limit to the deceit his loved one was ready to practise: it
made so remarkably little difference. I could