Jack Winston.

FROM JACK WINSTON TO LORD LANE

Toulouse, _December 16_.

Dear Montie,

I can't let you alone, you see. I must unburden myself, or something
will happen--something apoplectic. If I have sinned, I am punished; and
so far as I can see the worst still stretches before me in a long vista.
It was good of you to scrawl off that second letter, at midnight, as an
afterthought. It was forwarded, and has just reached me here, by grand
good luck.

You say I would do better to make a clean breast of it; but that's
easier said than done. You're not here, and you can't see the "lie of
the land" as I can. I'll explain the position to you, from my point of
view, for I think you don't quite understand it.

Not to mince matters, I am a Fraud, and Miss Randolph is the sort of
girl to resent being imposed upon, If this Payne, who rejoices in the
name of Jimmy, should find out the truth about me and tell her
to-morrow, she would be exceedingly angry, as she would have a right to
be, and would, I think, find it hard to forgive me. It is because I have
felt this instinctively that I have let things slide. I have drifted
down the stream of enjoyment, saying to the passing hour, like Goethe's
hero, "Stay, thou art fair," though too often the thought would present
itself that this could not go on for ever. Besides, there were
drawbacks, big or little, according to my mood. I have always kept it
before myself, more or less, that some day Miss Randolph would dispense
with me and my car, in the natural course of affairs, even if the event
were not hastened by some _contretemps_ or other; and that it might then
be as difficult to adjust matters as it is now. But in truth I hope it
won't be so. What I aim to do is to make myself so indispensable to her
as Brown that she can't bring herself to get on without me as Jack
Winston. I haven't done that yet, though it isn't for lack of trying;
therefore I'm not ready for the crisis, and therefore I'm afraid of
Payne. Yes, "afraid," that's the word. And my one consolation is that
he's equally afraid of me.

Your ordinary, habitual liar can bear up if he's found out, and laugh it
off somehow, but your snob and boaster can't. This man could hardly
survive being stripped of his dukes and earls, with which he's covered
his untitled nakedness as with a mantle, for the eyes of Miss Randol