g?'

'Thank you, madam;--I have dined.'

'Then, Mr Montague, I will leave you with your friend. My toilet,
though it will be very slight, will take longer than yours. We dine
you know in twenty minutes. I wish you could get your friend to join
us.' So saying, Mrs Hurtle tripped back across the sand towards the
hotel.

'Is this wise?' demanded Roger in a voice that was almost sepulchral,
as soon as the lady was out of hearing.

'You may well ask that, Carbury. Nobody knows the folly of it so
thoroughly as I do.'

'Then why do you do it? Do you mean to marry her?'

'No; certainly not.'

'Is it honest then, or like a gentleman, that you should be with her
in this way? Does she think that you intend to marry her?'

'I have told her that I would not. I have told her--.' Then he stopped.
He was going on to declare that he had told her that he loved another
woman, but he felt that he could hardly touch that matter in speaking
to Roger Carbury.

'What does she mean then? Has she no regard for her own character?'

'I would explain it to you all, Carbury, if I could. But you would
never have the patience to hear me.'

'I am not naturally impatient.'

'But this would drive you mad. I wrote to her assuring her that it
must be all over. Then she came here and sent for me. Was I not bound
to go to her?'

'Yes;--to go to her and repeat what you had said in your letter.'

'I did do so. I went with that very purpose, and did repeat it.'

'Then you should have left her.'

'Ah; but you do not understand. She begged that I would not desert her
in her loneliness. We have been so much together that I could not
desert her.'

'I certainly do not understand that, Paul. You have allowed yourself
to be entrapped into a promise of marriage; and then, for reasons
which we will not go into now but which we both thought to be
adequate, you resolved to break your promise, thinking that you would
be justified in doing so. But nothing can justify you in living with
the lady afterwards on such terms as to induce her to suppose that
your old promise holds good.'

'She does not think so. She cannot think so.'

'Then what must she be, to be here with you? And what must you be, to
be here, in public, with such a one as she is? I don't know why I
should trouble you or myself about it. People live now in a way that I
don't comprehend. If this be your way of living, I have no right to
complain.'

'For God's sake, Carbury, do not spea