Algernon had a lighted match in his hand.  He flung it into the fire.  “I’m hanged if I don’t think you have the confounded vanity to suppose she sets me as a spy upon you!”

A smile ran along Edward’s lips.  “I don’t think you’d know it, if she did.”

“Oh, you’re ten years older; you’re twenty,” bawled Algernon, in an extremity of disgust.  “Don’t I know what game you’re following up?  Isn’t it clear as day you’ve got another woman in your eye?”

“It’s as clear as day, my good Algy, that you see a portrait hanging in my chambers, and you have heard Mrs. Lovell’s opinion of the fact.  So much is perfectly clear.  There’s my hand.  I don’t blame you.  She’s a clever woman, and like many of the sort, shrewd at guessing the worst.  Come, take my hand.  I tell you, I don’t blame you.  I’ve been little dog to her myself, and fetched and carried, and wagged my tail.  It’s charming while it lasts.  Will you shake it?”

“Your tail, man?” Algernon roared in pretended amazement.

Edward eased him back to friendliness by laughing.  “No; my hand.”

They shook hands.

“All right,” said Algernon.  “You mean well.  It’s very well for you to preach virtue to a poor devil; you’ve got loose, or you’re regularly in love.”

“Virtue! by heaven!” Edward cried; “I wish I were entitled to preach it to any man on earth.”

His face flushed.  “There, good-bye, old fellow,” he added.

“Go to the city.  I’ll dine with you to-night, if you like; come and dine with me at my Club.  I shall be disengaged.”

Algernon mumbled a flexible assent to an appointment at Edward’s Club, dressed himself with care, borrowed a sovereign, for which he nodded his acceptance, and left him.

Edward set his brain upon a book of law.

It may have been two hours after he had sat thus in his Cistercian stillness, when a letter was delivered to him by one of the Inn porters.  Edward read the superscription, and asked the porter who it was that brought it.  Two young ladies, the porter said.

These were the contents:—­

“I am not sure that you will ever forgive me.  I cannot forgive myself when I think of that one word I was obliged to speak to you in the cold street, and nothing to explain why, and how much I love, you.  Oh! how I love you!  I cry while I write.  I cannot help it.  I was a sop of tears all night long, and oh! if you had seen my face in the morning.  I am thankful you did not.  Mother’s Bible brought me home.  It must have been guidance, for in my bed there lay my sister, and I could not leave her, I love her so.  I could not have got down stairs again after seeing her there; and I had to say that cold word and shut the window on you.  May I call you Edward still?  Oh, dear Edward, do make allowance for me.  Write kindly to me.  Say you forgive me.  I feel like a ghost to-day.  My life seems quite behind me somewhere, and I hardly