ougham drew up at the corner
of the street next to my chambers. The Honorable Miss Snape's card was
handed in. Presently, she entered, swimming into my room, richly, yet
simply dressed in the extreme of Parisian good taste. She was pale--or
rather colorless. She had fair hair, fine teeth, and a fashionable voice.
She threw herself gracefully into the chair I handed to her, and began by
uncoiling a string of phrases, to the effect that her visit was merely to
consult me on "unavoidable pecuniary difficulties."

According to my mode, I allowed her to talk; putting in only an
occasional word of question that seemed rather a random observation than
a significant query. At length after walking round and round the subject,
like a timid horse in a field around a groom with a sieve of oats, she
came nearer and nearer the subject. When she had fairly approached the
point, she stopped, as if her courage had failed her. But she soon
recovered, and observed, "I cannot think why you should take the trouble
to write so to me, a perfect stranger." Another pause--"I wonder no one
ever suspected me before."

Here was a confession and a key to character. The cold gray eye, the thin
compressed lips, which I had had time to observe, were true indexes to
the "lady's inner heart;" selfish calculating, utterly devoid of
conscience; unable to conceive the existence of spontaneous kindness;
utterly indifferent to anything except discovery, and almost indifferent
to that, because convinced that no serious consequences could affect a
lady of her rank and influence.

"Madam," I replied, "as long as you dealt with tradesmen accustomed to
depend on aristocratic customers, your rank and position, and their
large profits, protected you from suspicion; but you have made a mistake
in descending from your vantage ground to make a poor shopman your
innocent accomplice--a man who will be keenly alive to anything
that may injure his wife or children. His terrors--but for my
interposition--would have ruined you utterly. Tell me, how many of these
things have you put afloat?"

She seemed a little taken a-back by this speech, but was wonderfully
firm. She passed her white, jewelled hand over her eyes, seemed
calculating, and then whispered, with a confiding look of innocent
helplessness, admirably assumed, "About as many as amount to twelve
hundred pounds."

"And what means have you for meeting them?"

At this question so plainly put, her face flushed.