or you coming."

"Then I will not go;" and the woman sat down upon a chair at the foot
of the table. "I will not go till you have given me something to buy
food. You may put me out of the room if you can, but I will lie at
the door of the stairs. And if you get me out of the house, I will
sit upon the door-step."

"If you play that game, my poor girl, the police will take you."

"Let them. It has come to that with me, that I care for nothing. Out
of this I will not go till you give me money--unless I am put out."

And for this she had dressed herself with so much care, mending her
gloves, and darning her little fragments of finery! He stood looking
at her, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets,--looking at her
and thinking what he had better do to rid himself of her presence. If
he even quite resolved to take that little final journey of which we
have spoken, with the pistol in his hand, why should he not go and
leave her there? Or, for the matter of that, why should he not make
her his heir to all remainder of his wealth? What he still had left
was sufficient to place her in a seventh heaven of the earth. He
cared but little for her, and was at this moment angry with her; but
there was no one for whom he cared more, and no friend with whom he
was less angry. But then his mind was not quite made up as to that
final journey. Therefore he desired to rid himself and his room of
the nuisance of her presence.

"Jane," he said, looking at her again with that assumed tranquillity
of which I have spoken, "you talk of starving and of being ruined,--"

"I am starving. I have not a shilling in the world."

"Perhaps it may be a comfort to you in your troubles to know that
I am, at any rate, as badly off as you are? I won't say that I am
starving, because I could get food to eat at this moment if I wanted
it; but I am utterly ruined. My property,--what should have been
mine,--has been left away from me. I have lost the trumpery seat
in Parliament for which I have paid so much. All my relations have
turned their backs upon me--"

"Are you not going to be married?" she said, rising quickly from her
chair and coming close to him.

"Married! No;--but I am going to blow my brains out. Look at that
pistol, my girl. Of course you won't think that I am in earnest,--but
I am."

She looked up into his face piteously. "Oh! George," she said, "you
won't do that?"

"But I shall do that. There is nothing else left for me to do