be a good
woman; and there is never a night passes--though I never told you so
before--that I do not pray to God to let me help you and let you help me
to be tender and faithful and true."

It was the old story,--love was king. Wisdom to the winds! Practicality
to the corners of the earth! Prudence, power, and grandeur, hide your
diminished heads! Here were two people who cared nothing for you, and
who flung you aside without a fear as they stood together under the
trees in the raw evening air,--one a penniless little hired entertainer
of elderly ladies, the other an equally impecunious bondsman in a dingy
office.

They were quite happy,--even happy when time warned them that they must
bid each other goodnight. They walked together to the gates of Barbazon
Lodge, and parted in a state of bliss.

"Good-night," said Dolly. "Be good,--as somebody wise once said,--'Be
good, and you will be happy.'"

"Good-night," answered Griffith; "but might n't he have put it the other
way, Dolly, 'Be happy, and you will be good--because you can't help
it'?"

He had his hand on _her_ shoulder, this time, and as she laughed she put
her face down so that her soft, warm cheek nestled against it.

"But he didn't put it that way," she objected. "And we must take wisdom
as it comes. There! I must go now," rather in a hurry. "Some one is
coming--see!"

"Confound it!" he observed, devoutly. "Who is it?"

"I don't know," answered Dolly; "but you must let me go. Good-night,
again."

He released her, and she ran in through the gate, and up the gravel
walk, and so he was left to turn away and pass the intruder with an
appearance of nonchalance. And pass him he did, though whether with
successful indifference or not, one can hardly say; but in passing him
he looked up, and in looking up he recognized Ralph Gowan.

"Going to see her," he said, to himself, just as poor Mollie had said
the same thing, and just with the same heartburn. "The dev--But, no," he
broke off sharply, "I won't begin again. It is as she says,--the blessed
little darling!--it is shabby to be down on him because he has the best
of it." And he went on his way, not rejoicing, it is true, but still
trying to crush down a by no means unnatural feeling of rebellion.

CHAPTER X. ~ IN SLIPPERY PLACES.

THE wise one sat at the window and looked out. The view commanded by
Bloomsbury Place was not a specially imposing or attractive one. Four
or five tall, dingy houses w