tern and true letter to the woman,
telling her that as it was impossible that there should ever be
marriage between them, he felt himself bound to abstain from her
society. But then he remembered her solitude, her picture of herself
in London without even an acquaintance except himself, and he
convinced himself that it would be impossible that he should leave her
without seeing her. So he wrote to her thus:--

DEAR WINIFRED,

I will come for you to-morrow at half-past five. We will dine
together at the Thespian;--and then I will have a box at the
Haymarket. The Thespian is a good sort of place, and lots of
ladies dine there. You can dine in your bonnet.

Yours affectionately,

P. M.

Some half-formed idea ran through his brain that P. M. was a safer
signature than Paul Montague. Then came a long train of thoughts as to
the perils of the whole proceeding. She had told him that she had
announced herself to the keeper of the lodging-house as engaged to
him, and he had in a manner authorized the statement by declining to
contradict it at once. And now, after that announcement, he was
assenting to her proposal that they should go out and amuse themselves
together. Hitherto she had always seemed to him to be open, candid,
and free from intrigue. He had known her to be impulsive, capricious,
at times violent, but never deceitful. Perhaps he was unable to read
correctly the inner character of a woman whose experience of the world
had been much wider than his own. His mind misgave him that it might
be so; but still he thought that he knew that she was not treacherous.
And yet did not her present acts justify him in thinking that she was
carrying on a plot against him? The note, however, was sent, and he
prepared for the evening of the play, leaving the dangers of the
occasion to adjust themselves. He ordered the dinner and he took the
box, and at the hour fixed he was again at her lodgings.

The woman of the house with a smile showed him into Mrs Hurtle's
sitting-room, and he at once perceived that the smile was intended to
welcome him as an accepted lover. It was a smile half of
congratulation to the lover, half of congratulation to herself as a
woman that another man had been caught by the leg and made fast. Who
does not know the smile? What man, who has been caught and made sure,
has not felt a certain dissatisfaction at being so treated,
understanding that the smile is intended to convey to h