‘Tut-tut!’ Mr. Fishwick answered.  ’What need to tell any one?  Thoughts are free.’

’Oh, but’—­she laughed hysterically—­’I was not free, and I—­what do you think I did?’ She was growing more and more excited.

‘Tut-tut!’ the lawyer said.  ‘What matter?’

‘I promised—­to marry some one else.’

‘Good Lord!’ he said.  The words were forced from him.

‘Some one else!’ she repeated.  ’I was asked to be my lady, and it tempted me!  Think!  It tempted me,’ she continued with a second laugh, bitterly contemptuous.  ’Oh, what a worm—­what a thing I am!  It tempted me.  To be my lady, and to have my jewels, and to go to Ranelagh and the masquerades!  To have my box at the King’s House and my frolic in the pit!  And my woman as ugly as I liked—­if he might have my lips!  Think of it, think of it!  That anyone should be so low!  Or no, no, no!’ she cried in a different tone.  ’Don’t believe me!  I am not that!  I am not so vile!  But I thought he had tricked me, I thought he had cheated me, I thought that this was his work, and I was mad!  I think I was mad!’

‘Dear, dear,’ Mr. Fishwick said rubbing his head.  His tone was sympathetic; yet, strange to relate, there was no real smack of sorrow in it.  Nay, an acute ear might have caught a note of relief, of hope, almost of eagerness.  ‘Dear, dear, to be sure!’ he continued; ’I suppose—­it was Lord Almeric Doyley, the nobleman I saw at Oxford?’

‘Yes!’

‘And you don’t know what to do, child?’

‘To do?’ she exclaimed.

‘Which—­I mean which you shall accept.  Really,’ Mr. Fishwick continued, his brain succumbing to a kind of vertigo as he caught himself balancing the pretensions of Sir George and Lord Almeric, ’it is a very remarkable position for any young lady to enjoy, however born.  Such a choice—­’

‘Choice!’ she cried fiercely, out of the darkness.  ’There is no choice.  Don’t you understand?  I told him No, no, no, a thousand times No!’

Mr. Fishwick sighed.  ‘But I understood you to say,’ he answered meekly, ‘that you did not know what to do.’

‘How to tell Sir George!  How to tell him.’

Mr. Fishwick was silent a moment.  Then he said earnestly, ’I would not tell him.  Take my advice, child.  No harm has been done.  You said No to the other.’

‘I said Yes,’ she retorted.

‘But I thought—­’

‘And then I said No,’ she cried, between tears and foolish laughter.  ‘Cannot you understand?’

Mr. Fishwick could not; but, ‘Anyway, do not tell him,’ he said.  ’There is no need, and before marriage men think much of that at which they laugh afterwards.’

‘And much of a woman of whom they think nothing afterwards,’ she answered.

‘Yet do not tell him,’ he pleaded.  From the sound of his voice she knew that he was leaning forward.  ’Or at least wait.  Take the advice of one older than you, who knows the world, and wait.’