ake and his own--I have received information of my husband's
death."

"And does Dick--does he know?" asked the girl.

"Not yet. I have only lately learnt the news myself."

"Then if it is as you say, when he knows he will go back to you."

"There are difficulties in the way."

"What difficulties?"

"My dear, this. To try and forget me, he has been making love to you.
Men do these things. I merely ask you to convince yourself of the truth.
Go away for six months--disappear entirely. Leave him free--uninfluenced.
If he loves you--if it be not merely a sense of honour that binds him--you
will find him here on your return. If not--if in the interval I have
succeeded in running off with him, well, is not the two or three thousand
pounds I am prepared to put into this paper of yours a fair price for
such a lover?"

Tommy rose with a laugh of genuine amusement. She could never altogether
put aside her sense of humour, let Fate come with what terrifying face it
would.

"You may have him for nothing--if he is that man," the girl told her; "he
shall be free to choose between us."

"You mean you will release him from his engagement?"

"That is what I mean."

"Why not take my offer? You know the money is needed. It will save your
father years of anxiety and struggle. Go away--travel, for a couple of
months, if you're afraid of the six. Write him that you must be alone,
to think things over."

The girl turned upon her.

"And leave you a free field to lie and trick?"

The woman, too, had risen. "Do you think he really cares for you? At
the moment you interest him. At nineteen every woman is a mystery. When
the mood is past--and do you know how long a man's mood lasts, you poor
chit? Till he has caught what he is running after, and has tasted
it--then he will think not of what he has won, but of what he has lost:
of the society from which he has cut himself adrift; of all the old
pleasures and pursuits he can no longer enjoy; of the
luxuries--necessities to a man of his stamp--that marriage with you has
deprived him of. Then your face will be a perpetual reminder to him of
what he has paid for it, and he will curse it every time he sees it."

"You don't know him," the girl cried. "You know just a part of him--the
part you would know. All the rest of him is a good man, that would
rather his self-respect than all the luxuries you mention--you included."

"It seems to resolve itself into what manner