iage
with some decent and well-to-do man on the sunny side of thirty; but
where was such an one?

Thus I lay awake, and heard the hours chime and the trains go roaring
by, till all the household but Miss Flipp had returned. She entered
from the outside, did not come in till after midnight, and was not
alone. Her uncle accompanied her. My room had French lights opening
into the garden in the same way as Miss Flipp's, and as my ailment was
a heart affection it was sometimes necessary for me to go outside to
get sufficient air, and in this instance I had the door-windows wide
open and the bed pulled almost to the opening. Miss Flipp apparently
had her window open too, for despite the conversation in her room
being in subdued tones, I heard it where I lay.

It contained startling disclosures anent these two persons' relations
and characters, and when Mr Pornsch went his way with the uneven
footsteps of the overfed and of accumulating years, he left me in a
painful state of perturbation.

What course should I pursue?

Casting on a pair of slippers and a heavy cloak, I took a little path
leading from my window through the garden to the pier where the boats
were moored, and here I sat down to consider. Experience had taught me
to be chary of entering matters that did not concern me, but it had
not made me sufficiently callous to preserve my equanimity in face of
a discovery so serious as this.

Miss Flipp had sinned the sin which, if discovered, put a great gulf
'twixt her and Grandma Clay, Dawn, Carry, and myself, but which would
not prevent her fellow-sinner from associating with us on more than
terms of equality. Should Grandma Clay become aware of what I knew,
she certainly would bundle the girl out neck and crop, as she would be
justified in doing. But the girl was in a ghastly predicament, and
more sinned against than sinning, when one heard her grief and
remembered the age of her betrayer, which should have made him the
protector instead of the seducer of young women.

Times out of number the dramatic critics have termed me an artist of
the first rank, and it is this temperament which furnishes the faculty
of regarding all shades and consequences of life's issues unabashed,
and with the power to distil knowledge from good and bad and use it
experimentally, rather than, as a judge, condemnatory.

I determined to keep the girl's secret, and show myself
sympathetically friendly otherwise, hoping she would extend m