that the
devil might have saved himself the trouble of trying to get at him
through Ellen in the matter of his father and mother. He changed the
subject, and the pair warmed to one another as they had their tripe and
pots of beer. Of all people in the world Ellen was perhaps the one to
whom Ernest could have spoken most freely at this juncture. He told her
what he thought he could have told to no one else.

"You know, Ellen," he concluded, "I had learnt as a boy things that I
ought not to have learnt, and had never had a chance of that which would
have set me straight."

"Gentlefolks is always like that," said Ellen musingly.

"I believe you are right, but I am no longer a gentleman, Ellen, and I
don't see why I should be 'like that' any longer, my dear. I want you to
help me to be like something else as soon as possible."

"Lor'! Master Ernest, whatever can you be meaning?"

The pair soon afterwards left the eating-house and walked up Fetter Lane
together.

Ellen had had hard times since she had left Battersby, but they had left
little trace upon her.

Ernest saw only the fresh-looking smiling face, the dimpled cheek, the
clear blue eyes and lovely sphinx-like lips which he had remembered as a
boy. At nineteen she had looked older than she was, now she looked much
younger; indeed she looked hardly older than when Ernest had last seen
her, and it would have taken a man of much greater experience than he
possessed to suspect how completely she had fallen from her first estate.
It never occurred to him that the poor condition of her wardrobe was due
to her passion for ardent spirits, and that first and last she had served
five or six times as much time in gaol as he had. He ascribed the
poverty of her attire to the attempts to keep herself respectable, which
Ellen during supper had more than once alluded to. He had been charmed
with the way in which she had declared that a pint of beer would make her
tipsy, and had only allowed herself to be forced into drinking the whole
after a good deal of remonstrance. To him she appeared a very angel
dropped from the sky, and all the more easy to get on with for being a
fallen one.

As he walked up Fetter Lane with her towards Laystall Street, he thought
of the wonderful goodness of God towards him in throwing in his way the
very person of all others whom he was most glad to see, and whom, of all
others, in spite of her living so near him, he might have never fallen