f his coffer? Fight him!
No, he knew he could not fight Lord Ongar. The world was against such an
arrangement. And in truth Harry Clavering had so much contempt for Lord
Ongar, that he had no wish to fight so poor a creature. The man had had
delirium tremens, and was a worn-out miserable object. So at least Harry
Clavering was only too ready to believe. He did not care much for Lord
Ongar in the matter. His anger was against her; that she should have
deserted him for a miserable creature, who had nothing to back him but
wealth and rank!

There was wretchedness in every view of the matter. He loved her so
well, and yet he could do nothing! He could take no step toward saving
her or assisting himself. The marriage bells would ring within a month
from the present time, and his own father would go to the church and
marry them. Unless Lord Ongar were to die before then by God's hand,
there could be no escape--and of such escape Harry Clavering had no
thought. He felt a weary, dragging soreness at his heart, and told
himself that he must be miserable for-ever--not so miserable but what he
would work, but so wretched that the world could have for him no
satisfaction.

What could he do? What thing could he achieve so that she should know
that he did not let her go from him without more thought than his poor
words had expressed? He was perfectly aware that in their conversation
she had had the best of the argument--that he had talked almost like a
boy, while she had talked quite like a woman. She had treated him de
haut en bas with all that superiority which youth and beauty give to a
young woman over a very young man. What could he do? Before he returned
to the rectory, he had made up his mind what he would do, and on the
following morning Julia Brabazon received by the hands of her maid the
following note: "I think I understood all that you said to me yesterday.
At any rate, I understand that you have one trouble left, and that I
have the means of curing it." In the first draft of his letter he said
something about ushering, but that he omitted afterwards. "You may be
assured that the inclosed is all my own, and that it is entirely at my
own disposal. You may also be quite sure of good faith on the part of
the lender.--H. C." And in this letter he inclosed a check for six
hundred pounds. It was the money which he had saved since he took his
degree, and had been intended for Messrs. Beilby & Burton. But he would
wait another