As to sitting beside you, I suppose she had to sit where she was put! And as to sweetness—no doubt she was civil. But, at any rate, she declines to see you now. She has said so as plain as plain English can express it."

"Your statement is incredible. Suppose I say I don't believe it! What guarantee have I that you are telling me the truth?"

"None at all," she answered quietly.

He stared blankly for a moment. Then he said, "Mrs. Dobbs, for some reason, or no reason, you hate me. That is a matter of perfect indifference to me." (His white lips, twitching nostrils, and icily gleaming eyes, told a different tale.) "But I am not accustomed to be treated with impertinence by persons of your class."

"Only by your betters?" interpolated Mrs. Dobbs.

"And, moreover, I shall take immediate steps to inform Captain Cheffington of your behaviour. He will scarcely approve his daughter's remaining with a person who—who——"

"Says, she'd rather not see Mr. Theodore Bransby."

"Who insults his friends. With regard to Miss Cheffington, I have no doubt you will endeavour to poison her mind against me. But you may possibly find yourself baffled. I have made proposals to Miss Cheffington—no doubt you are acquainted with the fact—which, although not immediately accepted, were not definitively rejected: at least, not by the young lady herself. And I shall take an answer from no one else. Miss Cheffington's demeanour to me, of late, has been distinctly encouraging. If it be now changed, I shall know quite well to whose low cunning and insolent interference to attribute it. But you may find yourself mistaken in your reckoning, Mrs. Dobbs. Captain Cheffington is my friend: and Captain Cheffington will hardly be disposed to leave his daughter in such hands when I tell him all."

He was speaking in a laboured way, and his lips and hands were tremulous.

Mrs. Dobbs looked at him gravely, but with no trace of anger. "Look here," she said when he paused, apparently from want of breath—"you may as well know it first as last—May is engaged to be married; has been engaged more than three months."

Theodore gave a kind of gasp, and turned of so ghastly a pallor that Mrs. Dobbs, without another word, went to a closet in the room, unlocked it, took out a decanter with some sherry in
