ive me," said Jekyl, speaking in a low and most
respectful voice, "if I step for once from the humble path I have
tracked for myself in life, and offer my poor services as her adviser."

Nothing could be more deferential than the speech, or the way in which
it was uttered, and yet Kate heard it with a sense of pain. She felt
that her personal independence was already in peril, and that the meek
and bashful Mr. Jekyl had gained a mastery over her. He saw all this, he
read each struggle of her mind, and, were retreat practicable, he
would have retreated; but, the step once taken, the only course was
"forwards."

"Miss Dalton may reject my counsels, but she will not despise the
devotion in which they are proffered. A mere accident" here he glanced
at the paper which she still held in her fingers "a mere accident has
shown me that you have a difficulty; one for which neither your habits
nor knowledge of life can suggest the solution." He paused, and a very
slight nod from Kate emboldened him to proceed. "Were it not so,
Miss Dalton were the case one for which your own exquisite tact could
suffice, I never would have ventured on the liberty. I, who have watched
you with wondering admiration, directing and guiding your course amid
shoals and reefs and quicksands, where the most skilful might have found
shipwreck, it would have been hardihood indeed for me to have offered my
pilotage. But here, if I err not greatly, here is a new and unknown sea,
and here I may be of service to you."

"Is it so plain, then, what all this means?" said Kate, holding out the
bill towards Jekyl.

"Alas! Miss Dalton," said he, with a faint smile, "these are no enigmas
to us who mix in all the worries and cares of life."

"Then how do you read the riddle?" said she, almost laughing at the easy
flippancy of his tone.

"Mr. Dalton being an Irish gentleman of a kind disposition and facile
temper, suffers his tenantry to run most grievously into arrear. They
won't pay, and he won't make them; his own creditors having no sympathy
with such proceedings, become pressing and importunate. Mr. Dalton grows
angry, and they grow irritable; he makes his agent write to them, they
'instruct' their attorney to write to him. Mr. D. is puzzled, and were
it not that But, may I go on?"

"Of course; proceed," said she, smiling.

"You'll not be offended, though?" said he, "because, if I have not the
privilege of being frank, I shall be worthless to you."

"The