women, and the world, not to know what is
behind, and what is unknown even to yourself. I
know what is struggling in your mind, what is the
meaning of those griefs and this remorse, as you
think it. I shall not go back to that Inferno!
Never!"

"What?" said Miss Manuel, starting up.

"Ah! you begin to understand now," said he,
still more agitated. " I think we both begin to see
the light at last. Brighter days shall come for
both of us. You talk of flying. Yes, let us fly; let
us leave this vile place, this vile country. I have
seen your struggles, your noble struggles, and
shall help you by this confession. Come; what
do you say?"

He waited, almost panting, for an answer.
Miss Manuel had listened with a strange wonder;
at first, with eyes distending gradually, and then
herself rising slowly from the chair, until she was
standing her full height, looking down on him.
Not long had he to wait for an answer. It was
already written on her curling lips. He had
almost a presentiment of its tone.

"You say this to me!" she said at last, with a
scorn that seemed to blight and blast him. "Is
this your confession?"

He passed his hand over his eyes, a little
staggered, and drew back. "You understand me,"
he faltered. "We understand each other."

"/ understand you," she said. " Now I do.
God forgive my blindness for not understanding
you before! God forgive my weakness and foolish
repentance! God forgive me for taking you
to be a weak, foolish, empty coxcomb, and not
the mean—cold-souled—heartless—black-hearted
—villain that I now find you!"

The words were like a shower of blows, and
Fermor seemed to totter back under them, and
with his hand vainly tried to clear his eyes.
The utter surprise had almost taken away his
wits.

"Unworthy of pity!" she went on; "unworthy
of all grace! Now, indeed, the light has come!
Now I see with what cold calculation you took
away the life of the darling we lived for! And
yet she prayed for you—thought of you in her last
breath. Now you are destroying another poor
child, whose only sin has been trusting too
fondly to you. And you dare," she went on,
with something like fury, " to come to me with
your vile raptures, and your odious devotion.
We understand each other! I want no such
communion, indeed. Go away! Go out into
the street— anywhere! Go back to your hell, as
you call it! Leave me quickly! I can't breathe
while you are here. Go!"

She kept her arm steadily pointed to the
door. To the wretched Fermor, beaten,
humiliated, grovelling, she seemed to be standing
over the couch of the lost Violet, like an
Avenger. With his hand still before his eyes
he shrank to the door. And as he crept away
out to the street, so degraded that he loathed
his own personal consciousness, the idea that was
haunting him, and the gnawing reproach that
rung in his ears like a knell, was that that foolish,
blundering, awkward Hanbury, whom he despised,
but whom he felt to be superior in this, had
given him warning. This was, indeed, the one
stroke of his humiliation.

He did not know at the moment, as he stood
on the steps looking up and down to both ends
of the street, how near that unselfish Hanbury
was to him. Hanbury had hurried from Mrs.
Fermor eagerly, and now at the upper end of that
quiet thoroughfare, saw some one come out of
Miss Manuel's house. There was a lamp at the
door, and under this lamp he saw Fermor's
white face and yellow moustache, as it looked
wildly up and down. He did not care to meet
him then, and revolted at the infatuation which
took him there; so he stopped, and then he saw
Fermor turn vacantly, and take the direction up
the end which led away from town. He noted
his uncertain, tottering walk, and his figure
get gradually lost in the darkness. Hanbury
was about crossing the street, when he saw Miss
Manuel's door open suddenly, and another figure
burst out, and hurry up the street in the direction
Fermor had taken. He knew the coal-black
eyes and the dark beard of Miss Manuel's brother,
and the same lamp which had shown him Fermor's
blank pale face and yellow moustache, showed
him the wild, excited features and fierce eyes of
Louis Manuel.

John Hanbury was slow of thought; conclusions
did not ordinarily flash upon him as they
do upon other men. Manuel's figure had passed
into the distant darkness, and Hanbury had his
hand upon the door-bell before the idea had
occurred to him to question why Louis Manuel
should rush out so excitedly after Fermor. Then
an instinct of the scene above, as it had really
occurred, came upon him, and with something
like terror he went down the steps again, and
followed hastily.

The miserable Fermor, shrinking from himself
as if he was spotted over with some disease, kept
wandering on through that dark night. He
scarcely knew where he was going. He shrank
from taking a direction which could lead in any
way towards his home. From Alfred-place was
not far to that broad district of spreading
clayey fields, not yet built upon, where in a
year or so the monster building for the
Exhibition was to rise, and a new town of plaster
mansions. Fashion, on this night, had not quite
made up her mind, nor gathered up her skirts,
for a race in this direction. The clayey fields
were only cut up here and there by a stray row
of houses, and lit by a stray lamp; and into this
lonely district Fermor found himself suddenly
plunged. The openness and loneliness gave him
relief. He was recovering a little from the
awful blow—the blow to his pride. To what
had been the purpose of his later life? A stroke
to his overpowering vanity, and to that vanity
which was so mixed with selfishness as to be
more selfishness than vanity, was to him like a
physical stroke or dislocation. A sense of dull