ve repeated those words once--but perhaps you
don't remember them? You said: 'If I was as young as you are, I should
not despair.' Well! I have said that to myself over and over again, for
a hundred times at least. Eunice will listen to you, sir, when she will
listen to nobody else. This is the first happy moment I have had for
weeks past."

I suppose I must have looked glad to hear that. Anyway, Philip shook
hands with me again.

Miss Jillgall was present. The gentle-hearted old maid was so touched
by our meeting that she abandoned herself to the genial impulse of
the moment, and gave Philip a kiss. The outraged claims of propriety
instantly seized on her. She blushed as if the long-lost days of her
girlhood had been found again, and ran out of the room.

"Now, Mr. Philip," I said, "I have been waiting, at Miss Jillgall's
suggestion, to get my information from you. There is something wrong
between Eunice and yourself. What is it? And who is to blame?"

"Her vile sister is to blame," he answered. "That reptile was determined
to sting us. And she has done it!" he cried, starting to his feet, and
walking up and down the room, urged into action by his own unendurable
sense of wrong. "I say, she has done it, after Eunice has saved me--done
it, when Eunice was ready to be my wife."

"How has she done it?"

Between grief and indignation his reply was involved in a confusion of
vehemently-spoken words, which I shall not attempt to reproduce. Eunice
had reminded him that her sister had been publicly convicted of an
infamous crime, and publicly punished for it by imprisonment. "If I
consent to marry you," she said, "I stain you with my disgrace; that
shall never be." With this resolution, she had left him. "I have tried
to convince her," Philip said, "that she will not be associated with her
sister's disgrace when she bears my name; I have promised to take her
far away from England, among people who have never even heard of her
sister. Miss Jillgall has used her influence to help me. All in vain!
There is no hope for us but in you. I am not thinking selfishly only of
myself. She tries to conceal it--but, oh, she is broken-hearted! Ask the
farmer's wife, if you don't believe me. Judge for yourself, sir. Go--for
God's sake, go to the farm."

I made him sit down and compose himself.

"You may depend on my going to the farm," I answered. "I shall write to
Eunice to-day, and follow my letter to-morrow." He tried to thank me;