‘I am.’

’Don’t you think, upon the whole,——.  I don’t like to interfere, but upon my word the thing is so important.’

‘You think I had better not see her?’

‘I do.’

‘And lie to her?’

‘All is fair in love and war.’

’That means that no faith is due to a woman.  I cannot live by such a doctrine.  I do not mind owning to you that I wish I could do as you bid me.  I can’t.  I cannot be so false.  I must go, old fellow; but I know all that you would say to me, and I will endeavour to escape honestly from this trouble.’  And so he went.

Yes;—­to escape honestly from that trouble!  But how?  It is just that trouble from which there is no honest escape,—­unless a man may honestly break his word.  He had engaged himself to her so much that, simply to ignore her would be cowardly as well as false.  There was but one thing that he could do, but one step that he could take, by which his security and his self-respect might both be maintained.  He would tell her the exact truth, and put it to her whether, looking at their joint circumstances, it would not be better that they should—­part.  Reflecting on this during his three days’ journey down to Sydney, it was thus that he resolved,—­forgetting altogether in his meditations the renewed force of the woman’s charms upon himself.

As he went from the railway station at Sydney to the third-class inn at which he located himself, he saw the hoardings on all sides placarded with the name of Mademoiselle Cettini.  And there was a picture on some of these placards of a wonderful female, without much clothes, which was supposed to represent some tragic figure in a tableau.  There was the woman whom he was to make his wife.  He had travelled all night, and had intended to seek Mrs. Smith immediately after his breakfast.  But so unhappy was he, so much disgusted by the tragic figure in the picture, that he postponed his visit and went after his luggage.  His luggage was all right in the warehouse, and he arranged that it should be sent down to Nobble.  Waggons with stores did make their way to Nobble from the nearest railway station, and hopes were held out that the packages might be there in six weeks’ time.  He would have been willing to postpone their arrival for twelve months, for twenty-four months, could he, as compensation have been enabled to postpone, with honour, his visit to Mrs. Smith for the same time.

Soon after noon, however, his time was vacant, and he rushed to his fate.  She had sent him her address, and he found her living in very decent lodgings overlooking the public park.  He was at once shown up to her room, where he found her at breakfast.  ‘So you have come,’ she said.  Then, when the door was shut, she flung herself into his arms.