“You’ve bruised my lips—­that’s all.  And I deserved it for being such a damned fool as to lose my temper.”

“You look rather more decent than I should have expected.  What have you been doing in London?”

“How do you know I have been in London?”

“I took that for granted when I knew you’d left your work at Dudley.”

“Who told you I had left it?”

“What does it matter?”

“I should like to know,” said Hilliard, whose excitement had passed and left him cold.  “And I should like to know who told you before that I was in the habit of getting drunk?”

“Are you drunk now, or not?”

“Not in the way you mean.  Do you happen to know a man called Narramore?”

“Never heard the name.”

Hilliard felt ashamed of his ignoble suspicion.  He became silent.

“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be told,” added Dengate; “it was a friend of yours at Dudley that I came across when I was making inquiries about you:  Mullen his name was.”

A clerk at the ironworks, with whom Hilliard had been on terms of slight intimacy.

“Oh, that fellow,” he uttered carelessly.  “I’m glad to know it was no one else.  Why did you go inquiring about me?”

“I told you.  If I’d heard a better account I should have done a good deal more for you than pay that money.  I gave you a chance, too.  If you’d shown any kind of decent behaviour when I spoke to you in the train—­but it’s no good talking about that now.  This is the second time you’ve let me see what a natural blackguard you are.  It’s queer, too, you didn’t get that from your father.  I could have put you in the way of something good at Liverpool.  Now, I’d see you damned first, Well, have you run through the money?”

“Every penny of it gone in drink.”

“And what are you doing?”

“Walking with a man I should be glad to be rid of.”

“All right.  Here’s my card.  When you get into the gutter, and nobody’ll give you a hand out, let me know.”

With a nod, Dengate walked off.  Hilliard saw him smooth his silk hat as he went; then, without glancing at the card, he threw it away.

The next morning was cold and wet.  He lay in bed till eleven o’clock, when the charwoman came to put his rooms in order.  At mid-day he left home, had dinner at the nearest place he knew where a meal could be obtained on Sunday, and afterwards walked the streets for an hour under his umbrella.  The exercise did him good; on returning he felt able to sit down by the fire, and turn over the plates of his great book on French Cathedrals.  This, at all events, remained to him out of the wreck, and was a joy that could be counted upon in days to come.

He hoped Narramore would keep his promise, and was not disappointed.  On the verge of dusk his friend knocked and entered.

“The blind woman was at the door below,” he explained, “looking for somebody.”