on. You never mentioned that to me. When was it?' I did not want to
make a clean breast of it, but he has such a way of cross-questioning
one that I could not keep it back; and that is how it all came out. So
you must put up with it, for my sake. I dare not touch the money again,
was it ever so."

"Then I must speak to Mr. Walcott about it myself, the next time I see
him, for I think he has not been just to you."

"Oh yes, my dear, he has! He is always so just, poor boy!" There was an
ominous quaver here. "And it is not as if we wanted money. I had three
or four hundred from selling the business, and Alan has nearly that
every year--but now he gives two pounds a week----"

Then there was another collapse, and Lettice thought it best to let the
old woman have her cry out. Only she went over and sat by her side, and
took one of the thin hands between her own, and cried just a little to
keep her company.

"Oh, my dear," said Mrs. Bundlecombe at last, "it is such a comfort to
have a woman to talk to. I have not had a good talk to one of my own sex
since I came up to London, unless it is the landlady in Montagu Place,
and she is a poor old antiquity like myself, with none of your soft and
gentle ways. It would do me good to tell you all we have gone through
since that bad creature found us out, but I have no right to make you
miserable with other people's sorrows. No--I will go away before I begin
to be foolish again; and my boy will be waiting for me."

"If you think Mr. Walcott would not object to your telling me, and if it
will be any relief to you, do! Indeed, I think I would rather hear it."

So Mrs. Bundlecombe poured out her tale to sympathetic ears, and gave
Lettice an account of Alan's married life so far as she knew it, and of
the return of the runaway, and of the compact which Alan had made with
her, and of the post-cards, and the slandering and the threats.

"And the night before last he came home in a terrible rage--that would
be after seeing you, my dearie--and he walked about the room for ever so
long before he would tell me a word. And then he said,

"'I have seen her again, Aunt Bessy, and she has molested me horribly
out in the street, when I was with----'

"And there he stopped short, and fell on the sofa, and cried--yes, dear,
he cried like a woman, as if his heart would break; and I guessed why it
was, though he did not mention your name. For you know," said Mrs.
Bundlecombe, looking at Lettice