which he had found most
convenient for his singular tutorial pursuits. The winter did not pass
without days of all but starvation, but in March he received his fifteen
pounds for 'Mr Bailey,' and this was a fortune, putting him beyond the
reach of hunger for full six months. Not long after that he yielded to
a temptation that haunted him day and night, and went to call upon Amy,
who was still living with her mother at Westbourne Park. When he
entered the drawing-room Amy was sitting there alone; she rose with an
exclamation of frank pleasure.

'I have often thought of you lately, Mr Biffen. How kind to come and see
me!'

He could scarcely speak; her beauty, as she stood before him in the
graceful black dress, was anguish to his excited nerves, and her voice
was so cruel in its conventional warmth. When he looked at her eyes,
he remembered how their brightness had been dimmed with tears, and the
sorrow he had shared with her seemed to make him more than an ordinary
friend. When he told her of his success with the publishers, she was
delighted.

'Oh, when is it to come out? I shall watch the advertisements so
anxiously.'

'Will you allow me to send you a copy, Mrs Reardon?'

'Can you really spare one?'

Of the half-dozen he would receive, he scarcely knew how to dispose of
three. And Amy expressed her gratitude in the most charming way. She had
gained much in point of manner during the past twelve months; her ten
thousand pounds inspired her with the confidence necessary to a perfect
demeanour. That slight hardness which was wont to be perceptible in
her tone had altogether passed away; she seemed to be cultivating
flexibility of voice.

Mrs Yule came in, and was all graciousness. Then two callers presented
themselves. Biffen's pleasure was at an end as soon as he had to adapt
himself to polite dialogue; he escaped as speedily as possible.

He was not the kind of man that deceives himself as to his own aspect
in the eyes of others. Be as kind as she might, Amy could not set him
strutting Malvolio-wise; she viewed him as a poor devil who often had
to pawn his coat--a man of parts who would never get on in the world--a
friend to be thought of kindly because her dead husband had valued
him. Nothing more than that; he understood perfectly the limits of her
feeling. But this could not put restraint upon the emotion with which
he received any most trifling utterance of kindness from her. He did not
think of what was