VER since I became secretary I had been as one dead to my friends. Except the General, I had seen none of them. One or two, including Dick Shafthead, had called upon me, only to be told that I might not return until long after midnight (for I was occasionally in the habit of dining with one of my employers after my labors). When I thought of Dick, my conscience smote me. I intended always to write to him, and also to Lumme, to explain my disappearance, but never took pen in hand. I heard nothing from France, nothing about the packing-case; nor did I trouble my head about this silence. The present moment was enough for me. To Halfred I had only mentioned that I was busily employed in a distant part of London, and I fear my servant's vivid imagination troubled him considerably, for he was earnestly solicitous about my welfare.

“It ain't nothing I can lend a 'and in, sir?” he inquired one day.

“I am afraid not,” I replied.

He hesitated, uncertain how best to express his doubts politely and indicate a general warning.

“You'll excuse me, sir, for saying so,” he remarked at last, “but Mr. Titch 'e says that furriners sometimes gets themselves into trouble without knowing as 'ow they are doing anything wrong.”

“Tell Mr. Titch, with my compliments, to go to the devil and mind his own business,” I replied, with, I think, pardonable wrath.

“Yes, sir; very good, sir,” said Halfred, hastily; but I do not know that his doubts were removed. However I consoled myself for my want of confidence in him by thinking that he had now a fair field with Aramatilda.

On the evening of that day when we had despatched Mrs. Martin to the seaside, I returned earlier than usual and sat in my easy-chair ruminating on the joys and drawbacks of platonic friendship. “Yes,” I said to myself, “it is pleasant, it is pure—devilish pure—and it is elevating. But altogether satisfactory? No, to be candid; something begins to be lacking. If I had had the audacity this morning—what would she have said? Despised me? Alas, no doubt! Yet, is there not something delicate, ideal, out of all ordinary experience in our relations? And would I risk the loss of this? Never!”

At this point there came a knock upon the door, and in walked my dear Dick Shafthead.

“Found you at last,” he said. “Well, monsieur, give an account of yourself. What have you been doing—burgling or duelling or what?”

His manner was as cool and unpretentiously friendly as ever; he was the same, yet with a subtle difference I was instantly conscious of. There was I know not what of kindness in his eye, of greater courtesy in his voice. Somehow there seemed a more sympathetic air about him. Slight though it was, this something insensibly drew forth my confidence. Naturally, I should have hesitated to confess my little experiment in Plato and my improbable vocation to such a satirical critic. I could picture the grim smile with which he would listen, the dry comments he would make. But this evening I was emboldened to make a clean breast of it, and, though his smile was certainly sometimes a little more humorous than sympathetic, yet he heard me with a surprising appearance of interest.

“Then she's deuced pretty and embarrassingly proper?” he said, when I had finished the outline of my story.

“Indeed, my friend, she is both.”

“Novel experience?” he suggested.

“Entirely novel.”

“And what's to be the end of it?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Going to marry her?”

“Marry!” I exclaimed. “I have told you we are not even lovers. Dick, I cannot tell you what my feeling is towards her, because I do not know it myself. Yes, perhaps it is love. She has virtues; I have told you them—her truth, her high spirit, her—”

“Yes, yes,” interrupted Dick, with something of his old brutality, “you've given me the list already. Let's hear her faults.”

“She is so full of delightful faults I know not where to begin. Perverse, sometimes inconsiderate, without knowledge of herself. Divide these up into the little faults they give rise to in different circumstances, and you get a picture of an imperfect but charming woman.”

“It is evident you don't know what falling in love means,” said Dick.

I looked at him hard.

“Do you?” I asked.

Dick actually blushed.

“Well,” he replied, with a smile that had a little tenderness as well as humor, “since you are a man of feeling, monsieur, and by way of being—don't you know?—yourself, I might as well tell you. I've rather played the fool, I expect.”

He said this with an air of sincerity, but it was clear he did not think himself so very stupid in the matter.

“My dear friend,” I cried, “I am all ears and sympathy—also intelligent advice.”

And then the story came out. I shall not give it in Dick's words, for these were not selected with a view to romantic effect, and the story deserves better treatment.

It appeared that, some twenty years before, a cousin of Lady Shafthead's had taken a step which forever disgraced her in the eyes of her impecunious but ancient family. She had, in fact, married the local attorney, a vulgar but insinuating person with a doubtful reputation for honesty and industry. The consequences bore out the warnings of her family; he went from bad to worse, and she from discomfort to misery, until, at last, they both died, leaving not a single penny in the world, but, instead, a little orphan daughter. Of all the scandalized relations, Lady Shafthead had alone come to the rescue. She had the girl educated in a respectable school, and now, when she was nineteen years of age, gave her a home until she could find a profession for herself.

This latter step did not meet with Sir Philip's approval. He had lent the father money, and in return had had his name forged for a considerable amount; besides, he did not approve of bourgeois relations. However, he had reluctantly enough consented to let Miss Agnes Grey spend a few months at his house on the understanding that, as soon as an occupation was found, that was to be the last of the unworthy connection.

At this stage in the story—about a fortnight ago—fate and a short-sighted guest put a charge of shot into the baronet's left shoulder. At first it was feared the accident might be dangerous; Dick was hurriedly summoned home, and there he found Miss Agnes Grey grown (so he assured me) into one of the most charming girls imaginable. He had known her and been fond of her, in a patronizing way, for some years. Now he saw her with tears in her voice, anxious about his father, devoted to his mother, and all the time feeling herself a forlorn and superfluous dependant. What would any chivalrous young man, with an unattached heart, have done under these circumstances? What would I have done myself? Fallen in love, of course—or something like it.

Well, Dick did not do things by halves. He fell completely in love; circumstances hurried matters to an issue, and he discovered himself beloved in turn. Little was said, and little was done; but quite enough to enable a discerning eye to see at the first glance that something had happened to Dick.

And here he sat, with his blue eyes looking far through the walls of my room, and his mouth compressed, giving his confidence not to one of his oldest and most discreet friends, but to one who could share a sentiment. A strange state of things for Dick Shafthead!

“It is an honorable passion?” I asked.

“What the devil—” began Dick.

“Pardon,” I interposed. “I believe you. But the world is complex, and I merely asked. You are then engaged?”

Dick frowned.

“We haven't used that word,” he replied.

“But you intend to be?”

He was silent for a little, and then, with some bitterness, said: “My earnings for the last three years average £37, 11s., 4d. I have had two briefs precisely this term, and I am thirty years old. It would be an excellent thing to get engaged.”

“But your father; he will surely help you?”

“He will see me damned first.”

“Then he will not approve of Miss Grey?”

“He will not.”

“Have you asked him?”

“No.”

Again Dick was silent for a minute, and then he went on: “Look here, d'Haricot, old man, this is how it is. I know my father; he's one of the best, but if I've got any prejudices I inherit them honestly. What he likes he likes, and what he doesn't like he doesn't like. He doesn't like Agnes, he doesn't like her family—or didn't like 'em. He doesn't like younger sons marrying poor girls. On the other hand, he does like the 'right kind of people,' as he calls 'em, and the right sort of marriage, and he does like me too well, I think, to see me doing what he doesn't like. I have only a hundred a year of my own, and expectations from an aunt of fifty-two who has never had a day's illness in her life. You see?”

“What will you do?” I asked.

“What can I do?” he replied, and added, “it is pleasant folly.”

His brows were knitted, his mouth shut tight, his eyes hard. He had come down to stern realities and the mood of tenderness had passed.

“But you really love her?” I said.

His face lit up for a moment. “I do,” he answered, and then quickly the face clouded again.

“My friend,” I said, “I, too, have a friend—a girl, whom I place before the rest of the world; I share your sentiments and I judge your case for you. What is life without woman, without love? Would you place your income, your prospects, the sordid aspects of your life, even the displeasure of relations, before the most sacred passion of your heart? Dick, if you do not say to this dear girl, 'I love you; let the devil himself try to part us! I shall not think of you as the same friend.”

He gave a quick glance, and in his eye I saw that my audience was with me in spirit.

“And my father? Tell him that too?” he said, dryly in tone, but not unmoved, I was sure.

“Tell him that your veneration, your homage, belongs to him, but that your soul is your own! Tell him that you are not afraid to take some risk for one you love! Are you afraid, Dick?”

He gave a short laugh.

“I'd risk something,” he replied.

“Only something? And for Agnes Grey, Dick? Think of the future without her, the life you have been leading repeated from day to day, now that you have known her. Is that pleasant? Is she not worth some risk—a good deal of risk?”

He rose and then he smiled; and he had a very pleasant smile.

“Thanks,” he said; “you're a good chap, monsieur. I wish you had to tackle the governor, though.”

“Let me!” I exclaimed.

“Well,” he said, “if I want an eloquent counsel I know where to look for one. Good-night.”

“You will dare it?” I asked, as he went towards the door.

“Shouldn't be surprised,” he answered, and with a friendly nod was gone.

I said to myself that I had done a splendid night's work. Also I began to apply my principles to my own case.