enough to secure her condemnation.  And since that, what terrible things had been said of her!  And dear, uncharitable Cecilia Burton was apt to think, when evil was spoken of women—­of women whom she did not know—­that there could not be smoke without fire.  And now this woman was a widow with a large fortune, and wanted a husband!  What business had any widow to want a husband?  It is so easy for wives to speak and think after that fashion when they are satisfied with their own ventures.

It was arranged that when Harry came to the door, Mrs. Burton should go up alone to the drawing-room and receive him there, remaining with her husband in the dining-room till he should come.  Twice while sitting downstairs after the cloth was gone she ran upstairs with the avowed purpose of going into the nursery, but in truth that she might see that the room was comfortable, that it looked pretty, and that the chairs were so arranged as to be convenient.  The two eldest children were with them in the parlor, and when she started on her second errand, Cissy reminded her that baby would be asleep.  Theodore, who understood the little manoeuvre, smiled, but said nothing, and his wife, who in such matters was resolute, went and made her further little changes in the furniture.  At last there came the knock at the door—­the expected knock, a knock which told something of the hesitating, unhappy mind of him who had rapped, and Mrs. Burton started on her business.  “Tell him just simply why you are there alone,” said her husband.

“Is it Harry Clavering?” Cissy asked, “and mayn’t I go?”

“It is Harry Clavering,” her father said, “and you may not go.  Indeed, it is time you went somewhere else.”

It was Harry Clavering.  He had not spent a pleasant day since he had left Mr. Beilby’s offices in the morning, and, now that he had come to Onslow Crescent, he did not expect to spend a pleasant evening.  When I declare that as yet he had not come to any firm resolution, I fear that he will be held as being too weak for the role of hero even in such pages as these.  Perhaps no terms have been so injurious to the profession of the novelist as those two words, hero and heroine.  In spite of the latitude which is allowed to the writer in putting his own interpretation upon these words, something heroic is still expected; whereas, if he attempt to paint from nature, how little that is heroic should he describe!  How many young men, subjected to the temptations which had befallen Harry Clavering—­how many young men whom you, delicate reader, number among your friends—­would have come out from them unscathed?  A man, you say, delicate reader, a true man can love but one woman—­but one at a time.  So you say, and are so convinced; but no conviction was ever more false.  When a true man has loved with all his heart and all his soul—­does he cease to love—­does he cleanse his heart of that passion when circumstances run against him, and he