It came at the street door, and was quickly followed by a tap at his own.  Nancy had lost no time in replying.  What her letter might contain he found it impossible to conjecture.  Reproaches?  Joyous welcome?  Wrath?  Forgiveness?  He knew her so imperfectly, that he could not feel sure even as to the probabilities of the case.  And his suspense was abundantly justified.  Her answer came upon him with the force of a shock totally unexpected.

He read the lines again and again; he stared at the bank-note.  His first sensation was one of painful surprise; thereupon succeeded fiery resentment.  Reason put in a modest word, hinting that he had deserved no better; but he refused to listen.  Nothing could excuse so gross an insult.  He had not thought Nancy capable of this behaviour.  Tested, she betrayed the vice of birth.  Her imputation upon his motive in marrying her was sheer vulgar abuse, possible only on vulgar lips.  Well and good; now he knew her; all the torment of conscience he had suffered was needless.  And for the moment he experienced a great relief.

In less than ten minutes letter and bank-note were enclosed in a new envelope, and addressed back again to the sender.  With no word of comment; she must interpret him as she could, and would.  He went out, and threw the offensive packet into the nearest receptacle for such things.

Work was over for to-night.  After pacing in the obscurity of Dean’s Yard until his pulse had recovered a normal beat, he issued into the peopled ways, and turned towards Westminster Bridge.

Despite his neglect of Nancy, he had never ceased to think of her with a tenderness which, in his own judgment, signified something more than the simple fidelity of a married man.  Faithful in the technical sense he had not been, but the casual amours of a young man caused him no self-reproach; Nancy’s image remained without rival in his mind; he had continued to acknowledge her claims upon him, and, from time to time, to think of her with a lover’s longing.  As he only wrote when prompted by such a mood, his letters, however unsatisfying, were sincere.  Various influences conflicted with this amiable and honourable sentiment.  The desire of independence which had speeded him away from England still accompanied him on his return; he had never ceased to regret his marriage, and it seemed to him that, without this legal bondage, it would have been much easier to play a manly part at the time of Nancy’s becoming a mother.  Were she frankly his mistress, he would not be keeping thus far away when most she needed the consolation of his presence.  The secret marriage condemned him to a course of shame, and the more he thought of it, the more he marvelled at his deliberate complicity in such a fraud.  When poverty began to make itself felt, when he was actually hampered in his movements by want of money, this form of indignity, more than any galling to his pride, intensified the impatience with which he remembered that he could