aid Dolly softly.

"You have a great deal to learn. Wouldn't you like to begin by hearing
how Miss Thayer and I came to an understanding?"

"Oh, yes, yes! if you please," said Dolly, extremely glad to get upon a
more abstract subject of conversation.

"I owe that to myself, perhaps," Mr. Shubrick went on; "and I certainly
owe it to you. I told you how I got into my engagement with her. It was
a boyish fancy; but all the same, I was bound by it; and I should have
been legally bound before now, only that Christina always put off that
whenever I proposed it. I found too that the putting it off did not
make me miserable. Dolly, the case is going to be different this time!"

"You mean," said Dolly doubtfully, "it _is_ going to make you
miserable?"

"No! I mean, you are not going to put me off."

"Oh, but!"----said Dolly flushing, and stopped.

"I have settled that point in my own mind," he said, smiling; "it is as
well you should know it at once.--So time went by, until I went to
spend that Christmas Day in Rome. After that day I knew nearly all that
I know now. Of course it followed, that I could not accept the
invitation to Sorrento, when you were expected to be there. I could not
venture to see you again while I was bound in honour to another woman.
I stayed on board ship, those hot summer days, when all the officers
that could went ashore. I stayed and worked at my problem--what I was
to do."

He paused and Dolly said nothing. She was listening intently, and
entirely forgetting that the sunlight was coming very slant and would
soon be gone, and that home and supper were waiting for her managing
hand. Dolly's eyes were fixed upon another hand, which held hers, and
her ears were strained to catch every word. She rarely dared glance at
Mr. Shubrick's face.

"I wonder what counsel you would have given me?" he went on,--"if I
could have asked it of you as an indifferent person,--which you were."

"I don't know," said Dolly. "I know what people think"----

"Yes, I knew what people think, too; and it a little embarrassed my
considerations. However, Dolly, I made up my mind at last to
this;--that to marry Christina would be acting a lie; that I could not
do that; and that if I could, a lie to be acted all my life long would
be too heavy for me. Negatively, I made up my mind. Positively, I did
not know exactly how I should work it. But I must see Christina. And as
soon as affairs on board ship permitted, I got a furl