ck to Beauleigh, on some rotten pretence of legal
business about mortgages; and made a descent on Mr. Vane. You know
that he was as decent a soul as ever lived, and as sensitive. I'm
afraid that there was a lot of Stryke & Wigram in that interview--you
know, talk about having entrapped me into marriage with his
daughter--the last man in the world to dream of it. Fortunately, as I
gathered from her talk later, she made him angry enough to turn her out
of the house without seeing Pamela. She had to content herself with
writing to her--it must have been a letter."

"Why on earth didn't you interfere? I wouldn't have stood it!" said
Lord Crosland.

"I was at Beauleigh. I was pretty soon suspicious that our secret had
been discovered. When three days passed without my getting a letter
from Pamela, I was sure of it. And then Fortune played into my
stepmother's hands: I had a bad fall with a young horse, and injured my
spine. For two months it was touch and go whether I was a cripple for
life; and I was another four months on my back."

"By Jove!" said Lord Crosland with profound sympathy.

"Ah, but it was when I began to mend that my troubles began. There
were no letters for me--not a letter. Just think of it! I knew that
Pamela must be wanting me; and there I lay a helpless log. I was sure
that she had written; and, knowing my stepmother, I was sure that I
should never see the letters. I sent for her, and asked for them. She
coolly told me that she and her brother, my other guardian, Sir Everard
Wigram, Bumpkin Wigram he's generally called, had decided that I was to
be saved, if possible, from the results of my folly at any cost. They
would have taken steps to have the marriage nullified, if it hadn't
been for the risk of my being prosecuted for false entry. Then she
talked of my ingratitude after all her efforts to raise the Beauleighs
to their former glory. I couldn't stand any more that day; and the
nurse came in and fetched her out. That interview didn't do me any
good."

"It hardly sounds the thing for an injured spine," said Lord Crosland.

"A few days later we had another; and she had the cheek to tell me that
one day I should be grateful to her for having saved me from the
clutches of a designing girl--rank idiocy, you see, for she was only
keeping us apart for the time being. But it set me talking about the
firm of Stryke & Wigram; and for once I got her really angry. It did
me good. Yet