not speak of you to Miss Dale."

"There is my own friend! And now, John, mind you are here at
half-past eight on Thursday. Punctually at half-past eight. There is
a thing I have to tell you, which I will tell you then if you will
come. I had thought to have told you to-day."

"And why not now?"

"I cannot. My feelings are too many for me. I should never go through
with it after all that has passed between us about poor Broughton.
I should break down; indeed I should. Go now, for I am tired." Then
having probably taken a momentary advantage of that more potent
attraction to which we have before alluded, he left the room very
suddenly.

He left the room very suddenly because Madalina's movements had been
so sudden, and her words so full of impulse. He had become aware
that in this little game which he was playing in Porchester Terrace
everything ought to be done after some unaccustomed and special
fashion. So,--having clasped Madalina for one moment in his arms,--he
made a rush at the room door, and was out on the landing in a second.
He was a little too quick for old Lady Demolines, the skirt of whose
night-dress,--as it seemed to Johnny,--he saw whisking away, in at
another door. It was nothing, however, to him if old Lady Demolines,
who was always too ill to be seen, chose to roam about her own house
in her night-dress.

When he found himself alone in the street, his mind reverted to Dobbs
Broughton and the fate of the wretched man, and he sauntered slowly
down Palace Gardens, that he might look at the house in which he had
dined with a man who had destroyed himself by his own hands. He stood
for a moment looking up at the windows, in which there was now no
light, thinking of the poor woman whom he had seen in the midst of
luxury, and who was now left a widow in such miserable circumstances!
As for the suggestion that his friend Conway would marry her, he did
not believe it for a moment. He knew too well what the suggestions
of his Madalina were worth, and the motives from which they sprung.
But he thought it might be true that Mrs. Van Siever had absorbed all
there was of property, and possibly, also, that Musselboro was to
marry her daughter. At any rate, he would go to Dalrymple's rooms,
and if he could find him, would learn the truth. He knew enough of
Dalrymple's ways of life, and of the ways of his friend's chambers
and studio, to care nothing for the lateness of the hour, and in a
very few minutes he was