ou must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning,
Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were
forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no
excuse to make to you,--or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am,
the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy;
and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by
relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me."
There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are
composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to
write as reptiles.

"As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a
gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that
the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at
my table."

"What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while.

"Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes
under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get
into your house. That is too late for us now."

"There must be more than that, uncle."

"I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a
man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt
punishment by the nature of his own villainy. We have to remember
Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl!
poor girl!"

Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle.
"Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that
I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after
breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may
be that he has written to-day."

Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room
fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should
behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the
club?

CHAPTER XXVIII

The Board

Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the
morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he
left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had
seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story
will have shown what took place at that interview.

He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work
of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from
his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire,