h a faint reflection of her
smile of happier times--the most irresistible smile I have ever seen on
a woman's face.

"I owe much already to your kindness," she said. "And I feel more deeply
indebted to it now than ever. If you hear any rumours of my marriage
when you get back to London contradict them at once, on my authority."

"Have you resolved to break your engagement?" I asked.

"Can you doubt it?" she returned proudly, "after what you have told me!"

"My dear Miss Rachel, you are very young--and you may find more
difficulty in withdrawing from your present position than you
anticipate. Have you no one--I mean a lady, of course--whom you could
consult?"

"No one," she answered.

It distressed me, it did indeed distress me, to hear her say that. She
was so young and so lonely--and she bore it so well! The impulse to help
her got the better of any sense of my own unfitness which I might have
felt under the circumstances; and I stated such ideas on the subject as
occurred to me on the spur of the moment, to the best of my ability. I
have advised a prodigious number of clients, and have dealt with some
exceedingly awkward difficulties, in my time. But this was the first
occasion on which I had ever found myself advising a young lady how to
obtain her release from a marriage engagement. The suggestion I
offered amounted briefly to this. I recommended her to tell Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite--at a private interview, of course--that he had, to her
certain knowledge, betrayed the mercenary nature of the motive on
his side. She was then to add that their marriage, after what she had
discovered, was a simple impossibility--and she was to put it to him,
whether he thought it wisest to secure her silence by falling in with
her views, or to force her, by opposing them, to make the motive under
which she was acting generally known. If he attempted to defend himself,
or to deny the facts, she was, in that event, to refer him to ME.

Miss Verinder listened attentively till I had done. She then thanked me
very prettily for my advice, but informed me at the same time that it
was impossible for her to follow it.

"May I ask," I said, "what objection you see to following it?"

She hesitated--and then met me with a question on her side.

"Suppose you were asked to express your opinion of Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite's conduct?" she began.

"Yes?"

"What would you call it?"

"I should call it the conduct of a meanly deceitful man."