ttle tiddleywink?"

If Miss Julia had been ever so well disposed towards being made
technically an honest woman by her betrayer of auld lang syne, this
declaration of his motives might easily have hardened her heart against
him. What fatuity of affection could have survived it? Yet his candour
was probably his only redeeming feature. He was scarcely an invariable
hypocrite; he was merely heartless, sensual, and cruel to the full
extent of man's possibilities. Nevertheless, he could and would have
lied black white with a purpose. He was, this time, thrown off his
guard, as it were, and truthful by accident. Whether the way in which
the woman silently repelled his offer was due to her disgust at its
terms, or whether she had her doubts of the soundness of his
jurisprudence, the story can only guess. Probably the latter. She merely
said:--"I'm going to open the house," and left his inquiry unanswered.
This was notice to him that his free run of the lower apartments was
ended. He went upstairs to some place of concealment.

* * * * *

"What was you and young Carrots so busy about below here?" said Uncle Mo
next day, coming down the stairs to breakfast in the kitchen an hour
later than Aunt M'riar.

"Telling me of his Aunt Betsy yesterday. Mind your shirt-sleeve. It's
going in the butter."

"What's Aunt Betsy's little game?... No, it's all right--the butter's
too hard to hurt.... Down Chiswick way, ain't she?"

"Hammersmith." Aunt M'riar wasn't talkative; but then, this morning, it
was bloaters. They should only just hot through, or they dry.

"Who was the bloke he was talking about? Somebody he called _him_."
Uncle Mo's ears had been too sharp.

"There!--I've no time to be telling what a boy says. No one any good,
I'll go bail!" Whereupon, as Uncle Mo's curiosity was not really keenly
excited, the subject dropped.

But, as a matter of fact, Michael had contrived in a short time to give
an account of his experience of yesterday. And he had left Aunt M'riar
in a state of disquiet and apprehension which had to be concealed,
somehow. For she was quite clear that she would not take Mo into her
confidence. She saw she had to choose between risking an interview with
this convict husband of hers, and giving him up to the Law, probably to
the gallows.

The man would come again to seek out his old mother, to extort money
from her; that was beyond a doubt. But would he of necessity recognise