as such that they refused. It was like him. He could always do
the forbidden, the dare-devil, the crazily mad; but when it came to
the reasonable and straightforward something in him balked. Here he
was at what should have been the beginning of the end, and the demon
which at another time would have driven him on was holding him back.
Temptation had worked itself round the other way. It was temptation
not to do, when saving grace lay in doing.

An hour or more had gone by when Mr. Radbury knocked at the door,
timidly.

"Come in, Radbury," Allerton cried, in a gayety he didn't feel. "Have
a drink."

Mr. Radbury looked at the bottle and the glass. He looked at his young
employer, who with his hands in his pockets, was again standing by the
window. It was the first time in all the years of his service, first
with the father and then with the son, that this invitation had been
given him.

"Thanks, Mr. Rash," he said, with a thick, shaky utterance. "Liquor
and I are strangers. I wish I could feel----"

But the old man's trembling anxiety forced on Allerton the fact that
the foolish game was up. "All right, Radbury. Was only joking. No harm
done. Had only taken the thing out to--to look at it."

Before sitting down to read and sign the letters he put both glass and
bottle back into the keeping of Queen Caroline Murat, saying to
himself as he did so: "I must find some other way."

He was thrown back thus on Barbara's suggestion of a few hours
earlier. He must get rid of the girl! He had scarcely as yet
considered this proposal, though not because he deemed it unworthy of
himself. Nothing could be unworthy of himself. A man who was so little
of a man as he was entitled to do anything, however base, and feel no
shame. It was simply that his mind hadn't worked round to looking at
the thing as feasible. And yet it was; plainly it was. The law allowed
for it, if one only took advantage of the law's allowances. It would
be beastly, of course; and more beastly for him than the average of
men; but because it was beastly it were better done at once, before
the girl got used to luxurious surroundings.

But even this resolution, speedy as it was, came a little late. By
evening Letty was already growing used to luxurious surroundings, and
finding herself at home in them.

First, there were no longer any women in the house, and with the three
men--Steptoe's friends being already installed--she found herself safe
from the prying