ceive this journal daily,
obviously with a view to reports of the coming assizes. Once he tried to
break through into her confidence. It was August Bank Holiday, and they
had gone out on to the heath together to see the people wonderfully
assembled. Coming back across the burnt-up grass, strewn with paper
bags, banana peel, and the cores of apples, he hooked his hand into her
arm.

"What is to be done with a child that goes about all day thinking and
thinking and not telling anybody what she is thinking?"

She smiled round at him and answered:

"I know, Dad. She IS a pig, isn't she?"

This comparison with an animal of proverbial stubbornness was not
encouraging. Then his hand was squeezed to her side and he heard her
murmur:

"I wonder if all daughters are such beasts!"

He understood well that she had meant: 'There is only one thing I
want--one thing I mean to have--one thing in the world for me now!'

And he said soberly:

"We can't expect anything else."

"Oh, Daddy!" she answered, but nothing more.

Only four days later she came to his study with a letter, and a face so
flushed and troubled that he dropped his pen and got up in alarm.

"Read this, Dad! It's impossible! It's not true! It's terrible! Oh! What
am I to do?"

The letter ran thus, in a straight, boyish handwriting:

"ROYAL CHARLES HOSTEL,

"WORCESTER, Aug. 7th.

"MY NEDDA,

"I have just seen Bob tried. They have given him three years' penal.
It was awful to sit there and watch him. He can never stand it. It was
awful to watch him looking at ME. It's no good. I'm going to give myself
up. I must do it. I've got everything ready; they'll have to believe me
and squash his sentence. You see, but for me it would never have been
done. It's a matter of honour. I can't let him suffer any more. This
isn't impulse. I've been meaning to do it for some time, if they found
him guilty. So in a way, it's an immense relief. I'd like to have seen
you first, but it would only distress you, and I might not have been
able to go through with it after. Nedda, darling, if you still love me
when I get out, we'll go to New Zealand, away from this country where
they bully poor creatures like Bob. Be brave! I'll write to-morrow, if
they let me.

"Your

"Derek."

The first sensation in Felix on reading this effusion was poignant
recollection of the little lawyer's look after Derek had made the scene
at Tryst's committal and of his words: 'Nothing in it,