Neaera Witt had one last card to play. Alas, how great the stake, and how slight the chance! Still she would play it. If it failed, she would only drink a little deeper of humiliation, and be trampled a little more contemptuously under foot. What did that matter?

“You will not condemn a woman unheard,” she wrote, with a touch of melodrama. “I expect you here on Sunday evening at nine. You cannot be so hard as not to come.”

George had written that he would come, but that his determination was unchangeable. “I must come, as you ask me,” he said; “but it is useless—worse than useless.” Still he would come.

Bill Sykes likes to be tried in a black coat, and draggle-tailed Sal smooths her tangled locks before she enters the dock. Who can doubt, though it be not recorded, that the burghers of Calais, cruelly restricted to their shirts, donned their finest linen to face King Edward and his Queen, or that the Inquisitors were privileged to behold many a robe born to triumph on a different stage? And so Neaera Witt adorned herself to meet George Neston with subtle simplicity. Her own ill-chastened taste, fed upon popular engravings, hankered after black velvet, plainly made in clinging folds; but she fancied that the motive would be too obvious for an eye so rusÉ as George’s, and reluctantly surrendered her picture of a second Queen of Scots. White would be better; white could cling as well as black, and would so mingle suggestions of remorse and innocence that surely he could not be hard-hearted enough to draw the distinction. A knot of flowers, destined to be plucked to pieces by agitated hands—so much conventional emotion she could not deny herself,—a dress cut low, and open sleeves made to fall back when the white arms were upstretched for pity,—all this should make a combined assault on George’s higher nature and on his lower. Neaera thought that, if only she had been granted time and money to dress properly, she might never have seen the inside of Peckton gaol at all; for even lawyers are human, or, if that be disputed, let us say not superhuman.

George came in with all the awkwardness of an Englishman who hates a scene and feels himself a fool for his awkwardness. Neaera motioned him to a chair, and they sat silent for a moment.

“You sent for me, Mrs. Witt?”

“Yes,” said Neaera, looking at the fire. Then, with a sudden turn of her eyes upon him, she added, “It was only—to thank you.”

“I’m afraid you have little enough to thank me for.”

“Yes; your kindness at Liverpool.”

“Oh, it seemed the best way out. I hope you pardon the liberty I took?”

“And for an earlier kindness of yours.”

“I really——”

“Yes, yes. When they gave me that money you sent, I cried. I could not cry in prison, but I cried then. It was the first time any one had ever been kind to me.”

George was embarrassed. He had an uneasy feeling that the sentiment was trite; but, then, many of the saddest things are the tritest.

“It is good of you,” he said, stumbling in his words, “to remember it, in face of all I have done against you.”

“You pitied me then.”

“With all my heart.”

“How did I do it? How did I? I wish I had starved; and seen my father starve first!”

George wondered whether it was food that the late Mr. Gale so urgently needed.

“But I did it. I was a thief; and once a thief, always a thief.” And Neaera smiled a sad smile.

“You must not suppose,” he said, as he had once before, “that I do not make allowances.”

“Allowances?” she cried, starting up. “Allowances—always allowances! never pity! never mercy! never forgetfulness!”

“You did not ask for mercy,” said George.

“No, I didn’t. I know what you mean—I lied.”

“Yes, you lied, if you choose that word. You garbled documents, and, when the truth was told, you called it slander.”

Neaera had sunk back in her seat again. “Yes,” she moaned. “I couldn’t let it all go—I couldn’t!”

“You yourself have made pity impossible.”

“Oh no, not impossible! I loved him so, and he—he was so trustful.”

“The more reason for not deceiving him,” said George, grimly.

“What is it, after all?” she exclaimed, changing her tone. “What is it, I say?”

“Well, if you ask me, Mrs. Witt, it’s an awkward record.”

“An awkward record! Yes, but for a man in love?”

“That’s Gerald’s look-out. He can do as he pleases.”

“What, after you have put me to open shame? And for what? Because I loved my father most, and loved my—the man who loved me—most!” George shook his head.

“If you were in love—in love, I say, with a girl—yes, if you were in love with me, would this thing stop you?” And she stood before him proudly and scornfully.

George looked at her. “I don’t think it would,” he said.

“Then,” she asked, advancing a step, and stretching out her clasped hands, “why ask more for another than for yourself?”

“Gerald will be the head of the family, to begin with——”

“The family?”

“Certainly; the Neston family.”

“Who are they? Are they famous? I never heard of them till the other day.”

“I daresay not; we moved in rather different circles.”

“Do you take pleasure in being brutal?”

“I take pleasure in nothing connected with this confounded affair,” said George, impatiently.

“Then why not drop it?”

George shook his head.

“Too late,” he said.

“It’s mere selfishness. You are only thinking of what people will say of you.”

“I have a right to consider that.”

“It’s mean—mean and heartless!”

George rose. “Really, it’s no use going on with this,” said he. And, making a slight bow, he turned towards the door.

“I didn’t mean it—I didn’t mean it,” cried Neaera. “But I am out of my mind. Ah, have pity on me!” And she flung herself on the floor, right in his path.

George felt very absurd. He stood, his hat in one hand, his stick and gloves in the other, while Neaera clasped his legs below the knee, and, he feared, was about to bedew his boots with her tears.

“This is tragedy, I suppose,” he thought. “How the devil am I to get away?”

“I have never had a chance,” Neaera went on, “never. Ah, it is hard! And when at last——” Her voice choked, and George, to his horror, heard her sob.

He nervously shifted his feet about, as well as Neaera’s eager clutches would allow him. How he wished he had not come!

“I cannot bear it!” she cried. “They will all write about me, and jeer at me; and Gerald will cast me off. Where shall I hide?—where shall I hide? What was it to you?”

Then she was silent, but George heard her stifled weeping. Her clasp relaxed, and she fell forward, with her face on the floor, in front of him. He did not seize his chance of escape.

“London is uninhabitable to me, if I do as you ask,” he said.

She looked up, the tears escaping from her eyes.

“Ah, and the world to me, if you don’t!”

George sat down in an arm-chair; he abandoned the hope of running away. Neaera rose, pushed back her hair from her face, and fixed her eyes eagerly on him. He looked down for an instant, and she shot a hasty glance at the mirror, and then concentrated her gaze on him again, a little anxious smile coming to her lips.

“You will?” she asked in a whisper.

George petulantly threw his gloves on a table near him. Neaera advanced, and knelt down beside him, laying her hand on his shoulder.

“You have made me cry so much,” she said. “See, my eyes are dim. You won’t make me cry any more?”

George looked at the bright eyes, half veiled in tears, and the mouth trembling on the brink of fresh weeping. And the eyes and mouth were very good.

“It is Gerald,” she said; “he is so strict. And the shame, the shame!”

“You don’t know what it means to me.”

“I do indeed: I know it is hard. But you are generous. No, no, don’t turn your face away!”

George still sat silent. Neaera took his hand in hers.

“Ah, do!” she said.

George smiled,—at himself, not at Neaera.

“Well, don’t cry any more,” said he, “or the eyes will be red as well as dim.”

“You will, you will?” she whispered eagerly.

He nodded.

“Ah, you are good! God bless you, George: you are good!”

“No. I am only weak.”

Neaera swiftly bent and kissed his hand. “The hand that gives me life,” she said.

“Nonsense,” said George, rather roughly.

“Will you clear me altogether?”

“Oh yes; everything or nothing,”

“Will you give me that—that character?”

“Yes.”

She seized his reluctant hand, and kissed it again.

“I have your word?”

“You have.”

She leapt up, suddenly radiant.

“Ah, George, Cousin George, how I love you! Where is it?”

George took the document out of his pocket.

Neaera seized it. “Light a candle,” she cried.

George with an amused smile obeyed her.

“You hold the candle, and I will burn it!” And she watched the paper consumed with the look of a gleeful child. Then she suddenly stretched her arms. “Oh, I am tired!”

“Poor child!” said George. “You can leave it to me now.”

“However shall I repay you? I never can.” Then she suddenly saw the cat, ran to him, and picked him up. “We are forgiven, Bob! we are forgiven!” she cried, dancing about the room.

George watched her with amusement.

She put the cat down and came to him. “See, you have made me happy. Is that enough?”

“It is something,” said he.

“And here is something more!” And she threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him.

“That’s better,” said George. “Any more?”

“Not till we are cousins.”

“Be gentle in your triumph.”

“No, no; don’t talk like that. Are you going?”

“Yes. I must go and put things straight.”

“Good-bye. I—I hope you won’t find it very hard.”

“I have been paid in advance.”

Neaera blushed a little.

“You shall be better paid, if ever I can,” she said.

George paused outside, to light a cigarette; then he struck into the park, and walked slowly along, meditating as he went. When he arrived at Hyde Park Corner, he roused himself from his reverie.

“Now the woman was very fair!” said he, as he hailed a hansom.