likely to remain there for a short time yet. Will you
favour us with a call, or make an appointment elsewhere?

"We have the honour to be, dear Sir,

"Yours faithfully,
"TULKS & CROWE."

He paced the room, holding the letter behind his back. It was more than
three weeks since the investigation referred to had been committed to
Messrs. Tulks & Crowe, private inquiry agents; and long before this he
had grown careless whether they succeeded or not. An impulse of
curiosity; nothing more. Well, yes; a fondness for playing with
secrets, a disposition to get power into his hands--excited to activity
just after a long pleasant talk with Lilian. He was sorry this letter
had come; yet it made him smile, which perhaps nothing else would have
done just now.

"To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering." The quotation was often
in his mind, and he had never felt its force so profoundly as this
afternoon. The worst of it was, he did not believe himself a victim of
inherent weakness; rather of circumstances which persistently baffled
him. But it came to the same thing. Was he never to know the joy of
vigorous action?--of asserting himself to some notable result?

He could do so now, if he chose. In his hand were strings, which, if he
liked to pull them, would topple down a goodly edifice, with uproar and
dust and amazement indescribable: so slight an effort, so
incommensurable an outcome! He had it in his power to shock the
conventional propriety of a whole town, and doubtless, to some extent,
of all England. What a vast joke that would be--to look at no other
aspect of the matter! The screamings of imbecile morality--the
confusion of party zeal--the roaring of indignant pulpits!

He laughed outright.

But no; of course it was only an amusing dream. He was not malignant
enough. The old-fashioned sense of honour was too strong in him. Pooh!
He would go and dine, and then laugh away his evening somewhere or
other.

Carefully he burnt the letter. To-morrow he would look in at the office
of those people, hear their story, and so have done with it.

Next morning he was still in the same mind. He went to Tulks & Crowe's,
and spent about an hour closeted with the senior member of that useful
firm. "A benevolent interest--anxious to help the poor devil if
possible--miserable story, that of the marriage--was to be hoped that
the girl would be persuaded to acknowledge him, and help him to lead an
honest life--no idea where she