o be?"

"I fear he is not," said Mr. Blackthorne, making the admission in a tone
of reluctance, though, to tell the truth, he had been longing to pass me
on for the last five minutes.

"You mean that he is fast?"

"Worse than that," said James Blackthorne, lowering his voice as they
walked down one of the shady garden paths. "He is a dangerous,
unprincipled fellow, and into the bargain an avowed Nihilist. All that
is involved in that word you perhaps scarcely realise."

"Indeed I do," she exclaimed with a shocked expression. "I have just
been reading a review of that book by Stepniak. Their social and
religious views are terrible; free-love, atheism, everything that could
bring ruin on the human race. Is he indeed a Nihilist?"

Mr. Blackthorne's conscience gave him a sharp prick, for he knew that he
ought not to have passed me on. He tried to pacify it with the excuse
that he had only promised not to tell that Miss Houghton had been his
informant.

"I assure you," he said impressively, "it is only too true. I know it on
the best authority."

And here I cannot help remarking that it has always seemed to me strange
that even experienced women of the world, like Mrs. Milton-Cleave, can be
so easily hoodwinked by that vague nonentity, 'The Best Authority.' I am
inclined to think that were I a human being I should retort with an
expressive motion of the finger and thumb, "Oh, you know it on the best
authority, do you? Then _that_ for your story!"

However, I thrived wonderfully on the best authority, and it would be
ungrateful of me to speak evil of that powerful though imaginary being.

At right angles with the garden walk down which the two were pacing there
was another wide pathway, bordered by high closely clipped shrubs. Down
this paced a very different couple. Mrs. Milton-Cleave caught sight of
them, and so did curate. Mrs. Milton-Cleave sighed.

"I am afraid he is running after Gertrude Morley! Poor girl! I hope she
will not be deluded into encouraging him."

And then they made just the same little set remarks about the
desirability of stopping so dangerous an acquaintance, and the
impossibility of interfering with other people's affairs, and the sad
necessity of standing by with folded hands. I laughed so much over their
hollow little phrases that at last I was fain to beat a retreat, and,
prompted by curiosity to know a little of the truth, I followed Sigismund
and Gertrude down the broad