she went to the station out of regard for the great man? Pooh! she
went with an eye to her own interests; and she means to make the great
man useful. Thank God, I can stop that!"

She checked herself there, and looked suspiciously at the door of Mr.
Gracedieu's room.

"In the interest of our conversation," she whispered, "we have not
given a thought to the place we have been talking in. Do you think the
Minister has heard us?"

"Not if he is asleep--as I left him."

Miss Jillgall shook her head ominously. "The safe way is this way," she
said. "Come with me."

CHAPTER XXXV. THE FUTURE LOOKS GLOOMY.

My ever-helpful guide led me to my room--well out of Mr. Gracedieu's
hearing, if he happened to be awake--at the other end of the passage.
Having opened the door, she paused on the threshold. The decrees of that
merciless English despot, Propriety, claimed her for their own. "Oh,
dear!" she said to herself, "ought I to go in?"

My interest as a man (and, what is more, an old man) in the coming
disclosure was too serious to be trifled with in this way. I took her
arm, and led her into my room as if I was at a dinner-party, leading
her to the table. Is it the good or the evil fortune of mortals that
the comic side of life, and the serious side of life, are perpetually in
collision with each other? We burst out laughing, at a moment of grave
importance to us both. Perfectly inappropriate, and perfectly natural.
But we were neither of us philosophers, and we were ashamed of our own
merriment the moment it had ceased.

"When you hear what I have to tell you," Miss Jillgall began, "I hope
you will think as I do. What has slipped Mr. Gracedieu's memory, it
may be safer to say--for he is sometimes irritable, poor dear--where he
won't know anything about it."

With that she told the lamentable story of the desertion of Eunice.

In silence I listened, from first to last. How could I trust myself
to speak, as I must have spoken, in the presence of a woman? The cruel
injury inflicted on the poor girl, who had interested and touched me in
the first innocent year of her life--who had grown to womanhood to be
the victim of two wretches, both trusted by her, both bound to her by
the sacred debt of love--so fired my temper that I longed to be within
reach of the man, with a horsewhip in my hand. Seeing in my face, as I
suppose, what was passing in my mind, Miss Jillgall expressed sympathy
and admiration in her own quaint way: