It's
the girl's own affair."

"Then why did you tell me your story?"

I was a trifle embarrassed. "To warn you off," I returned smiling. He
took no more notice of these words than presently to remark that Lord
Iffield had no serious intentions. "Very possibly," I said. "But you
mustn't speak as if Lord Iffield and you were her only alternatives."

Dawling thought a moment. "Wouldn't the people she has consulted give
some information? She must have been to people. How else can she have
been condemned?"

"Condemned to what? Condemned to perpetual nippers? Of course she has
consulted some of the big specialists, but she has done it, you may be
sure, in the most clandestine manner; and even if it were supposable
that they would tell you anything--which I altogether doubt--you would
have great difficulty in finding out which men they are. Therefore leave
it alone; never show her what you suspect."

I even, before he quitted me, asked him to promise me this. "All right,
I promise," he said gloomily enough. He was a lover who could tacitly
grant the proposition that there was no limit to the deceit his loved
one was ready to practise: it made so remarkably little difference. I
could see that from this moment he would be filled with a passionate
pity ever so little qualified by a sense of the girl's fatuity and
folly. She was always accessible to him--that I knew; for if she had
told him he was an idiot to dream she could dream of him, she would have
resented the imputation of having failed to make it clear that she
would always be glad to regard him as a friend. What were most of her
friends--what were all of them--but repudiated idiots? I was perfectly
aware that in her conversations and confidences I myself for instance
had a niche in the gallery. As regards poor Dawling I knew how often he
still called on the Hammond Synges. It was not there but under the
wing of the Floyd-Taylors that her intimacy with Lord Iffield most
flourished. At all events when a week after the visit I have just
summarised Flora's name was one morning brought up to me I jumped at
the conclusion that Dawling had been with her and even I fear briefly
entertained the thought that he had broken his word.

IX

She left me, after she had been introduced, in no suspense about her
present motive; she was on the contrary in a visible fever to enlighten
me; but I promptly learned that for the alarm with which she pitiably
panted our young man wa