worldly indifference lent him force.

"Ruined?" she said.

"Yes."

"You I'll be more so than you were a month ago. I mean, you tell me
nothing new, I have known it."

Amid the crush and hurry in his brain, caused by this strange
communication, pressed the necessity to vindicate his honour.

"I give you the word of a gentleman, Lady Charlotte, that I came to you
the first moment it has been made known to me. I never suspected it
before this day."

"Nothing would prompt me to disbelieve that." She reached him her hand.

"You have known it!" he broke from a short silence.

"Yes--never mind how. I could not allude to it. Of course I had to wait
till you took the initiative."

The impulse to think the best of what we are on the point of renouncing
is spontaneous. If at the same time this object shall exhibit itself in
altogether new, undreamt-of, glorious colours, others besides a
sentimentalist might waver, and be in some danger of clutching it a
little tenderly ere it is cast off.

"My duty was to tell you the very instant it came to my knowledge," he
said, fascinated in his heart by the display of greatness of mind which
he now half divined to be approaching, and wished to avoid.

"Well, I suppose that is a duty between friends?" said she.

"Between friends! Shall we still--always be friends?"

"I think I have said more than once that it won't be my fault if we are
not."

"Because, the greater and happier ambition to which I aspired..." This
was what he designed to say, sentimentally propelled, by way of graceful
exit, and what was almost printed on a scroll in his head for the tongue
to read off fluently. He stopped at 'the greater,' beginning to
stumble--to flounder; and fearing that he said less than was due as a
compliment to the occasion, he said more.

By no means a quick reader of character, Lady Charlotte nevertheless
perceived that the man who spoke in this fashion, after what she had
confessed, must be sentimentally, if not actually, playing double.

Thus she came to his assistance: "Are you begging permission to break our
engagement?"

"At least, whatever I do get I must beg for now!" He took refuge adroitly
in a foolish reply, and it served him. That he had in all probability
lost his chance by the method he had adopted, and by sentimentalizing at
the wrong moment, was becoming evident, notwithstanding. In a sort of
despair he attempted comfort by critically examining her features, and
t