t outward dishonour, and yet
the worst possible; dishonour in her own eyes. What a fool she had
been, to meddle in this business at all! She had done it with her eyes
open, trusting that she could exercise her power upon anybody and yet
remain in her own power. Just the reverse of that had come to pass, and
she had nobody to blame but herself. If Pitt was leaving his father and
mother in England, to go to New York, it could be on only one business.
The game, for her, was up.

There were weeks of torture before her, she knew,--slow
torture,--during which she must show as little of what she felt as an
Indian at the stake. She must be with Mrs. Dallas, and hear the whole
matter talked of, and from point to point as the history went on; and
must help talk of it. For if Pitt was going to New York now, Betty was
not; that was a fixed thing. She must stay for the present where she
was.

She was a little pale and tired, they said on the drive home. And that
was all anybody ever knew.

CHAPTER XLVI.

_A VISIT_.

Pitt sailed for America in the early days of Autumn; and September had
not yet run out when he arrived in New York. His first researches, as
on former occasions, amounted to nothing, and several days passed with
no fruit of his trouble. The intelligence received at the post office
gave him no more than he had been assured of already. They believed a
letter did come occasionally to a certain Colonel Gainsborough, but the
occasions were not often; the letters were not called for regularly;
and the address, further than that it was 'New York,' was not known.
Pitt was thrown upon his own resources, which narrowed down pretty much
to observation and conjecture. To exercise the former, he perambulated
the streets of the city; his brain was busy with the latter constantly,
whenever its energies were not devoted to seeing and hearing.

He roved the streets in fair weather and foul, and at all hours. He
watched keenly all the figures he passed, at least until assured they
had no interest for him; he peered into shops; he reviewed equipages.
In those days it was possible to do this to some purpose, if a man were
looking for somebody; the streets were not as now filled with a
confused and confusing crowd going all ways at once; and no policeman
was needed, even for the most timid, to cross Broadway where it was
busiest. What a chance there was then for the gay part of the world to
show itself! A lady would heave in