sed aunt at Swindon, previous to which absence she had been an
unnoticeable chit) till days and days, ever so many, upon his honour,
after he had struck for freedom by his great first backing-out
letter--the precious document, the treat for a British jury, in which,
by itself, Miss Cookham's firm instructed her to recognise the prospect
of a fortune. The way the ruffians had been "her" ruffians--it appeared
as if she had posted them behind her from the first of her beginning
her game!--and the way "instructions" bounced out, with it, at a touch,
larger than life, as if she had arrived with her pocket full of them!
The date of the letter, taken with its other connections, and the date
of _her_ first give-away for himself, his seeing her get out of the
Brighton train with Bill Frankle that day he had gone to make the row
at the Station parcels' office about the miscarriage of the box from
Wales--those were the facts it sufficed him to point to, as he had
pointed to them for Nan Drury's benefit, goodness knew, often and often
enough. If he didn't seek occasion to do so for any one else's--in open
court as they said--that was his own affair, or at least his and Nan's.

It little mattered, meanwhile, if on their bench of desolation, all that
summer--and it may be added for summers and summers, to say nothing of
winters, there and elsewhere, to come--she did give way to her artless
habit of not contradicting him enough, which led to her often trailing
up and down before him, too complacently, the untimely shreds and
patches of his own glooms and desperations. "Well, I'm glad I _am_ in
your life, terrible as it is, however or whenever I did come in!" and
"_Of course_ you'd rather have starved--and it seems pretty well as if
we shall, doesn't it?--than have bought her off by a false, abhorrent
love, wouldn't you?" and "It isn't as if she hadn't made up to you the
way she did before you had so much as looked at her, is it? or as if you
hadn't shown her what you felt her really to be before you had so much
as looked at _me_, is it either?" and "Yes, how on earth, pawning the
shoes on your feet, you're going to raise another shilling--_that's_
what you want to know, poor darling, don't you?"

III

His creditor, at the hour it suited her, transferred her base of
operations to town, to which impenetrable scene she had also herself
retired; and his raising of the first Two Hundred, during five
exasperated and miserable months