suppose i should let you be here if you were not but ah i don t like to think what i might have been driven to do in the end if i had had to give up all faith in you i nearly lost it several times and i am sure aunt hopes to get her own way even now but you won t let her you do believe in me now i can t help it she said simply though i don t understand it all yet nor i for that matter but so long as you me through everything nothing can part us again can it � nothing shall and if papa once came to you shall you be at the academy to night we are going gave me a ticket i h n t intended to in which the turns than once it because you see when they haven t hung you it isn t a particularly pleasant way to spend the evening but i will go now and continued if by any chance i can t bring you together to night i shall insist on taking papa to see you to morrow and aunt may say just whatever she chooses we are going to be happy again after all you will see how weu everything will go now wished the waiter would look another way so that he might gain possession of s hand which lay so near him but the waiter who possibly carried a heart under his dress shirt kept a eye upon them and his chin had a contemptuous twist if it never goes worse than this was saying and at that moment mrs swept into the refreshment room with the manner of a queen followed by the colonel looking as if he would very much rather not have come while felt that after all the waiter s eye had its advantages rose and stood upon his defence mrs drew one of the light chairs up to the table and sat down while the waiter drew near she was evidently in an extremely bad temper which was not improved by the necessity of ordering a cup of before she could get rid of the waiter and open fire well mr she began do you think this is behaviour on your part i have done nothing to my knowledge mrs he replied stiffly our meeting here was a fallen idol quite an accident and colonel himself asked md to take charge of your niece took you for else growled the colonel you knew there must be some mistake and you made no effort to your father he has only been home two days and you deceive him already papa pleaded i hadn t seen for so long and then he saved my life jove you know said the colonel in an to his sister she s right there mrs was not to be it was too bad this should have turned up just when her plans seemed about to succeed he may have saved her life she said i was not there but even if he did he had no right to presume upon it we won t detain you here any longer mr mrs scarcely returned his farewell and the colonel did so with a that cost him a secret effort the young fellow might be as as possible but he thought his sister was rather hard on him however he had made a mess of it and concluded to hold his tongue till he saw his way more clearly but cared little believed in him loved him still sooner or later things would come right he could wait now as he came out into the passage again and passed the the hall was with a military spectacle brilliant and so that the might be enchanted by it � the musical ride of the household in which the turns than once but he was in no mood to be by it just then the vast hall seemed too to contain his happiness he had to seek the open air and the crowded streets he walked fast and hard for a great joy like a great grief demands action of some sort and got back to st john s wood by a long round some time before it was necessary to begin to dress for the after a fashion he had already dined somewhere though he probably could not have said what his dinner consisted of and so there was nothing to do now but sit in his and build castles in the air most people would not have thought his prospects particularly hopeful his reputation as a painter had certainly fallen off he had bills to meet and no notion where to turn for money but he had shaken off the hideous image that was all his confidence and courage and immediately his horizon had brightened what did he care for the p st now it had not divided him from his darling she was true to him and he would win her yet so he dreamed as the dusk drew on and the clock in the struck eight and then nine in half an hour or so he would begin to dress it was unusually dark for the time he thought so dark that he could not see the clock and could scarcely believe it was no more than nine just then a church clock began to strike � it took a long time surely to strike nine he counted the strokes twelve he lit a candle to himself and then saw something which struck consternation and despair into his soul above the clock rose the too familiar a fallen countenance bland and beaming as ever of the thing he bad fondly believed to be smothered in the black mud of the canal how had it burst the of its bag and returned thus out of the depths to confound him it 