gs. But I should be a little beast to
accept right away like that. If there are any feathers about, I
should deserve to have them stuck on to me with tar. Don't think
of going abroad or doing anything foolish, dear, like that, till
you have seen me--that is to say, us, for Dad is bringing Mother
and me up to town by the first train to-morrow. Dad feels sure
that everything is not lost. He'll dig out General Gadsby and
fix up something for you. In the meantime, get us rooms at the
Savoy, though Mother is worried as to whether it's a respectable
place for Deans to stay at. But I know you wouldn't like to meet
us at Sturrocks's--otherwise you would have been there yourself.
Meet our train. All love from

"PEGGY."

Doggie engaged the rooms, but he did not meet the train. He did not
even stay in the hotel to meet his relations. He could not meet them.
He could not meet the pity in their eyes. He read in Peggy's note a
desire to pet and soothe him and call him "Poor little Doggie," and he
writhed. He could not even take up an heroic attitude, and say to
Peggy: "When I have retrieved the past and can bring you an unsullied
reputation, I will return and claim you. Till then farewell." There
was no retrieving the past. Other men might fail at first, and then
make good; but he was not like them. His was the fall of Humpty
Dumpty. Final--irretrievable.

He packed up his things in a fright and, leaving no address at the
Savoy, drove to the Russell Hotel in Bloomsbury. But he wrote Peggy a
letter "to await arrival." If time had permitted he would have sent a
telegram, stating that he was off for Tobolsk or Tierra del Fuego, and
thereby prevented their useless journey; but they had already started
when he received Peggy's message.

Nothing could be done, he wrote, in effect, to her, nothing in the way
of redemption. He would not put her father to the risk of any other
such humiliation. He had learned, by the most bitter experience, that
the men who counted now in the world's respect and in woman's love
were men of a type to which, with all the goodwill in the world, he
could not make himself belong--he did not say to which he wished he
could belong with all the agony and yearning of his soul. Peggy must
forget him. The only thing he could do was to act up to her generous
estimate of him as an honourable gentleman. As such it was