ually
speaking, this had occurred; but even so remarkable an incident still
left me sufficiently at sea to cause him to continue: "Why, the effect
of those spectacles!"

I seemed to catch the tail of his idea. "Mrs. Meldrum's?"

"They're so awfully ugly and they increase so the dear woman's
ugliness." This remark began to flash a light, and when he quickly added
"She sees herself, she sees her own fate!" my response was so immediate
that I had almost taken the words out of his mouth. While I tried to
fix this sudden image of Flora's face glazed in and cross-barred even as
Mrs. Meldrum's was glazed and barred, he went on to assert that only the
horror of that image, looming out at herself, could be the reason of her
avoiding such a monitress. The fact he had encountered made everything
hideously vivid and more vivid than anything else that just such another
pair of goggles was what would have been prescribed to Flora.

"I see--I see," I presently rejoined. "What would become of Lord Iffield
if she were suddenly to come out in them? What indeed would become of
every one, what would become of _everything?_" This was an inquiry that
Dawling was evidently unprepared to meet, and I completed it by saying
at last: "My dear fellow, for that matter, what would become of _you?_"

Once more he turned on me his good green eyes. "Oh, I shouldn't mind!"

The tone of his words somehow made his ugly face beautiful, and I felt
that there dated from this moment in my heart a confirmed affection for
him. None the less, at the same time, perversely and rudely, I became
aware of a certain drollery in our discussion of such alternatives. It
made me laugh out and say to him while I laughed: "You'd take her even
with those things of Mrs. Meldrum's?"

He remained mournfully grave; I could see that he was surprised at my
rude mirth. But he summoned back a vision of the lady at Folkestone and
conscientiously replied: "Even with those things of Mrs. Meldrum's."
I begged him not to think my laughter in bad taste: it was only a
practical recognition of the fact that we had built a monstrous castle
in the air. Didn't he see on what flimsy ground the structure rested?
The evidence was preposterously small. He believed the worst, but we
were utterly ignorant.

"I shall find out the truth," he promptly replied.

"How can you? If you question her you'll simply drive her to perjure
herself. Wherein after all does it concern you to know the truth?