ure I don't know
what) about me, sir. I think I ought to be here too."

"It's a lie!" shouted Paul, "What a villain that boy is! Don't believe a
word he says, Dr. Grimstone; it's all false--all!"

"This is very suspicious," said the Doctor; "if your conscience were
good, Bultitude, you could have no object in preventing me from hearing
Chawner. Chawner, in spite of some obvious defects in his character," he
went on, with a gulp (he never could quite overcome a repulsion to the
boy), "is, on the whole, a right-minded and, ah, conscientious boy. I
hear Chawner first."

"Then, sir, if you please," said Chawner, with an odious side smirk of
triumph at Paul, who, quite crushed by the horror of the situation, had
collapsed feebly on his chair again, "I thought it was my duty to let
you see this. I found it to-day in Bultitude's prayerbook, sir." And he
handed Dick's unlucky scrawl to the Doctor, who took it to the lamp and
read it hurriedly through.

After that there was a terrible moment of dead silence; then the Doctor
looked up and said shortly, "You did well to tell me of this, Chawner;
you may go now."

When they were alone once more he turned upon the speechless Paul with
furious scorn and indignation. "Contemptible liar and hypocrite," he
thundered, pacing restlessly up and down the room in his excitement,
till Paul felt very like Daniel, without his sense of security, "you are
unmasked--unmasked, sir! You led me to believe that you were as much
shocked and pained at this girl's venturing to write to you as I could
be myself. You called it, quite correctly, 'forward and improper'; you
pretended you had never given her the least encouragement--had not heard
her name even--till to-day. And here is a note, written, as I should
imagine, some time since, in which you address her as 'Connie Davenant,'
and have the impudence to admire the hat she wore the Sunday before! I
shudder, sir, to think of such duplicity, such precocious and shameless
depravity. It astounds me. It deprives me of all power to think!"

Paul made some faint and inarticulate remark about being a family
man--always most particular, and so forth--luckily it passed unheard.

"What shall I do with you?" continued the Doctor; "how shall I punish
such monstrous misconduct?"

"Don't ask _me_, sir," said Paul, desperately--"only, for heaven's sake,
get it over as soon as possible."

"If I linger, sir," retorted the Doctor, "it is because I have grave
d