“There was nothing like that about her when I saw her.”

“You didn’t turn her inside out as I’ve done; but stop half a moment.”  Then he descended, chalked away at his cue hastily, pocketed a shilling or two, and returned.  “You didn’t turn her inside out as I’ve done.  I tell you, Clavvy, there’s nothing to be done there, and there never was.  If you’d kept on going yourself she’d have drained you as dry—­as dry as that table.  There’s your thirty pounds back, and, upon my word, old fellow, you ought to thank me.”

Archie did thank him, and Doodles was not without his triumph.  Of the frequent references to Warwickshire which he had been forced to endure, he said nothing, nor yet of the reference to Michaelmas dinners; and, gradually, as he came to talk frequently to Archie of the Russian spy, and perhaps also to one or two others of his more intimate friends, he began to convince himself that he really had wormed the truth out of Madam Gordeloup, and got altogether the better of that lady, in a very wonderful way.

Chapter XXXVI

Harry Clavering’s Confession

Harry Clavering, when he went away from Onslow Crescent, after his interview with Cecilia Burton, was a wretched, pitiable man.  He had told the truth of himself as far as he was able to tell it, to a woman whom he thoroughly esteemed, and having done so was convinced that she could no longer entertain any respect for him.  He had laid bare to her all his weakness, and for a moment she had spurned him.  It was true that she had again reconciled herself to him, struggling to save both him and her sister from future misery—­that she had even condescended to implore him to be gracious to Florence, taking that which to her mind seemed then to be the surest path to her object; but not the less did he feel that she must despise him.  Having promised his hand to one woman—­to a woman whom he still professed that he loved dearly—­he had allowed himself to be cheated into offering it to another.  And he knew that the cheating had been his own.  It was he who had done the evil.  Julia, in showing her affection for him, had tendered her love to a man whom she believed to be free.  He had intended to walk straight.  He had not allowed himself to be enamored of the wealth possessed by this woman who had thrown herself at his feet.  But he had been so weak that he had fallen in his own despite.

There is, I suppose, no young man possessed of average talents and average education, who does not early in life lay out for himself some career with more or less precision—­some career which is high in its tendencies and noble in its aspirations, and to which he is afterward compelled to compare the circumstances of the life which he shapes for himself.  In doing this he may not attempt, perhaps, to lay down for himself any prescribed amount of success which he will endeavor to reach, or even the very pathway