promise of marriage, I will
give you some compensation. I will give you two thousand pounds,
although I know that promise to have been drawn from her by fraud,
treachery and cunning."

Allan Lyster began to see, in his own phrase, that the game was up. He
unlocked the door of a little cabinet, and took from it a bundle of
papers. He gave them to Lord Atherton, who, still standing, read them
word for word.

"It is as I thought," he said, when he came to the last. "It is the
worst case of fraud, deception and cowardice I have ever met. Nothing
could be more mean, more dishonorable, more revolting. Still, as the
promise is true, I will give you a check for two thousand pounds when
you have destroyed them."

Very slowly and deliberately Allan Lyster tore the letters into the
smallest shreds, until they all were destroyed, then Lord Atherton,
taking a check book from his pocket, wrote him out a check for two
thousand pounds.

Allan took it sullenly enough.

"If I had my rights," he said, "I should have more than that every
quarter."

"That is as it may be," said Lord Atherton, quietly. "You may have
deceived a very young and inexperienced girl; but you would not,
perhaps, have been so successful when that same girl was able to compare
you with others. Now I have paid you; remember, I do not seek to
purchase your silence. I leave it entirely to your own option whether
you tell your story or not. I know that you cannot brand yourself with
deeper disgrace and shame than by making public your share in this
transaction."

Allan Lyster murmured some insolent words which his lordship did not
choose to hear. He straightened the lash of his whip.

"Now," he continued, blandly, "I am going to give you a lesson. I am
going to teach you several things. The first is to respect the trusts
that parents and governesses place in you when they confide young girls
to you for lessons; the second, is to respect women, and not, like a
vile, mean coward, to trade upon their secrets; and the third lesson I
wish to give you is to make you an honest man, to teach you to live on
your own earnings, and not on the price of a woman's tears. This is how
I would enforce my lesson."

He raised that strong right arm of his and rained down heavy blows on
the cowardly traitor who had taken a woman's money as the price of his
honor and manhood. His face never for one moment lost its calm; but the
strong arm did its work, until the coward whined for