ne point--to get rid of his visitor as soon as possible.

He rose slowly and painfully (for the mere physical shock had been
heavy), and, placing himself at a table, tried to write the few words of
acknowledgment that Mohun dictated; but his hand trembled so excessively
that he could hardly form the letters. As he looked up in piteous
deprecation, evidently fearing lest his inability to comply should be
construed into unwillingness or rebellion, he presented a spectacle of
degraded humanity so revolting in its abasement that even the cynic
turned away in painful disgust.

It was done at last. As Willis saw his confession consigned to Mohun's
pocket-book, his avarice gave him courage to try one last effort to gain
something by the transaction--a salve to his bruises--a set-off against
the _relicta non bene parmula_.

"I hope you will consider I have done all I can, sir," he said, looking
wistfully at the bank-note, which still lay on the table. "I shall be
ruined if this becomes known."

The cast-steel smile which was peculiar to him hardened the colonel's
face.

"You must come down on Miss Bellasys for compensation. She pays well, I
have no doubt. You never get another _sou_ from our side, if it were to
keep you from starving. My second thought was the best, after all; it
saved time and--money. (He put the note back into his purse.) I'll give
you one caution, though. Keep out of Mr. Livingstone's way. If he meets
you, after hearing all this, he'll break your neck, I believe in my
conscience." So he left him.

For the second time that evening Willis looked in the glass--the
reflection was not so satisfactory. Was that unseemly crumpled ruin the
white tie, sublime in its scientific wrinkles, on which its author had
gazed with a pardonable paternal pride? No wonder that he stamped in
wrath, not the less bitter because impotent, while he shook off the dust
from his garments as a testimony against Ralph Mohun.

He repaired the damages, though, to the best of his power, and then went
off to keep his appointment; but the _pates a la bechamelle_ were as
ashes, and the _gelee au marisquin_ as gall to his parched, disordered
palate. He made himself so intensely disagreeable that poor Heloise
thenceforth swore an enmity against his compatriots, which endured to
the end of her brief misspent existence. "_Gredin d'Anglais, va!_" she
was wont to say, grinding her little white teeth melodramatically,
whenever she recalled that