y identity. He just said that he would like to play
to me in private if that would give me pleasure, and that possibly I
could spare an hour and would go with him.... Afterwards his brougham
would be at my disposal. His tone was the perfection of deferential
courtesy. Once the secretary came in--a young man rather like
himself--and they talked together in a foreign language that was not
French nor German; then the secretary bowed and retired.... We were
alone.... There can be no sort of doubt that unless I was prepared to
flout the wisdom of the ages, I ought to have refused his suggestion. But
is not the wisdom of the ages a medicine for majorities? And, indeed, I
was prepared to flout it, as in our highest and our lowest moments we
often are. Moreover, how many women in my place, confronted by that
divine creature, wooed by that wondrous personality, intoxicated by that
smile and that voice, allured by the appeal of those marvellous hands,
would have found the strength to resist? I did not resist, I yielded; I
accepted. I was already in disgrace with Aunt Constance--as well be
drowned in twelve feet of water as in six!

So we drove rapidly away in the brougham, through the miry,
light-reflecting streets of Hanbridge in the direction of Knype. And the
raindrops ran down the windows of the brougham, and in the cushioned
interior we could see each other darkly. He did his best to be at ease,
and he almost succeeded. My feeling towards him, as regards the external
management, the social guidance, of the affair, was as though we were at
sea in a dangerous storm, and he was on the bridge and I was a mere
passenger, and could take no responsibility. Who knew through what
difficult channels we might not have to steer, and from what lee-shores
we might not have to beat away? I saw that he perceived this. When I
offered him some awkward compliment about his good English, he seized the
chance of a narrative, and told me about his parentage: how his mother
was Scotch, and his father Danish, and how, after his father's death, his
mother had married Emilio Diaz, a Spanish teacher of music in Edinburgh,
and how he had taken, by force of early habit, the name of his
stepfather. The whole world was familiar with these facts, and I was
familiar with them; but their recital served our turn in the brougham,
and, of course, Diaz could add touches which had escaped the
_Staffordshire Recorder_, and perhaps all other papers. He was explainin