speak
to you as one of the family, if only to save you from further disgrace,
and perhaps prosecution,"--she emphasised the last words, and then
repeated them, "yes, from prosecution. Not only has this person been
bleeding you, working you to death, and taking your last penny----"

Jimmy, remembering all that Lalage had done for him during the past
three months, cut her short savagely. "That's a lie. She's been
everything a woman should be to me."

His sister laughed in bitter scorn. "And to half a dozen other men as
well. Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, what a fool you are, how you've been fooled. Do
you think she's been true to you? Do you think a vile creature like that
could be true to anyone? No, I will speak for all your swearing at me.
Do you think that whilst you have been slaving at that office at nights
she has been at home thinking of you? Oh, you have been a blind fool!
She has told you lies about everything, over the rent, over the amount
she had to pay to the hire-purchase people, over what she was spending.
Do you think your paltry two pounds a week was sufficient to dress her
and keep her in luxury?"

Jimmy turned away, gripping the mantelpiece for support. He remembered
many little things which had given him a momentary pang of suspicion at
the time; now, suddenly those suspicions became certainties; and when he
looked round again his face was five years older, for he had loved
Lalage, and he knew that May was telling him the truth. He had been a
blind fool; but still the remembrance of the past was strong in him, and
he made a last fight against believing.

"It's a lie, it's a lie," he repeated hoarsely. There was something in
his eyes which nearly broke down May's hardness, a look she had never
seen on any man's face before, which she never got out of her memory
again.

"I know it hurts, Jimmy, dear," she said far more gently. "It must hurt
because you've been infatuated by a very clever and bad woman; but for
all that it is true. Do you know anything of her past? What has she told
you? We know now that she was the daughter of a scientific writer, and
that, even when he lay on his dying bed, she went away with someone,
then came back with a lie in her mouth, about having been to town,
selling one of his unpublished books. Her own aunt told us of it, her
aunt by marriage."

"I don't believe it. I won't believe it," Jimmy muttered.

May shrugged her shoulders. "We have proofs, the best of proofs. Is it
not