m his club, he found a note from Lady
Ongar. It was very short, and the blood rushed to his face as he felt
ashamed at seeing with how much apparent ease she had answered him. He
had written with difficulty, and had written awkwardly. But there was
nothing awkward in her words:

DEAR HARRY:--We are quits now. I do not know why we should ever meet
as enemies. I shall never feel myself to be an enemy of yours. I
think it would be well that we should see each other, and, if you
have no objection to seeing me, I will be at home any evening that
you may call. Indeed, I am at home always in the evening. Surely,
Harry, there can be no reason why we should not meet. You need not
fear that there will be danger in it.

Will you give my compliments to Miss Florence Burton, with my best
wishes for her happiness? Your Mrs. Burton I have seen--as you may
have heard, and I congratulate you on your friend. Yours always, J.
O.

The writing of this letter seemed to have been easy enough, and
certainly there was nothing in it that was awkward; but I think that the
writer had suffered more in the writing than Harry had done in producing
his longer epistle. But she had known how to hide her suffering, and had
used a tone which told no tale of her wounds. We are quits now, she had
said, and she had repeated the words over and over again to herself as
she walked up and down her room. Yes, they were quits now, if the
reflection of that fact could do her any good. She had ill-treated him
in her early days; but, as she had told herself so often, she had served
him rather than injured him by that ill-treatment. She had been false to
him; but her falsehood had preserved him from a lot which could not have
been fortunate. With such a clog as she would have been round his
neck--with such a wife, without a shilling of fortune, how could he have
risen in the world? No! Though she had deceived him, she had served him.
Then, after that, had come the tragedy of her life, the terrible days in
thinking of which she still shuddered, the days of her husband and
Sophie Gordeloup--that terrible death-bed, those attacks upon her honor,
misery upon misery, as to which she never now spoke a word to any one,
and as to which she was resolved she never would speak again. She had
sold herself for money, and had got the price, but the punishment of her
offence had been very heavy. And now, in these latter days, she had
th