Her
eyes blazed as she read; he would not even allow her the satisfaction
of giving him the lie--and the misery of straining and pinching to do
the impossible. From pride, or from pity, or from both, he had
finished the thing there and then, or he thought he had. She tore the
paper across and then across again.

"What are you doing?" Captain Polkington cried, seizing her hands as
she would have torn it again. "Don't you know it is valuable? I must
keep it; he can't go back on it if he wants to." He took it from her,
and began to piece it together. "I can look the world in the face
again," he said, admiring the fragments. "I am free, free and cleared;
that debt would have hung like a millstone around my neck, but I am
free of it; it is cancelled."

"Free!" Julia said with scorn. There are disadvantages in reducing a
man to a subordinate position and allowing him no use for his
self-respect; it is a virtue that has a tendency to atrophy. Julia
recognised this with something like personal shame. "Your debt is
discharged," she said gently, "but mine is not; it has been shifted,
not cancelled; it lies with me and Mr. Rawson-Clew now, and it shall
be paid somehow."

Captain Polkington hardly heeded what she said; he was still smoothing
the pieces of paper. "What?" he asked, as he put them away in an
envelope, but he did not wait for her answer. "It was very heedless of
you to tear it," he said; "but fortunately there is no damage done; it
is perfectly valid, all that can be required."

CHAPTER III

NARCISSUS TRIANDRUS AZUREUM

The _elite_ called to congratulate Mrs. Polkington on her daughter's
engagement. All manner of pleasant things were said by them and by
Mrs. Polkington in an atmosphere of social sunshine. She thought it so
nice of them to come so soon, she told them so severally; she knew
that they--"you all," "you, at least," "you, my oldest friend,"
according to circumstances--would be pleased to hear about it. She
gave sundry little hints of future plans and hopes, among other things
mentioned that it really was hard for poor Violet to have to go and
cheer an invalid cousin just now.

"And the worst of it is," so Mrs. Polkington said, "she may have to be
away some time. There really seems no one else to go, and one could
not leave the poor dear alone at this dull time of the year; and,
after all, Bath is not very far off; some of Richard's people live
there, too. I should not be surprised if the yo