"I know what I'm at. Lord bless you, I'm not going to lose my head because I see a fine woman."

"Or your heart either?"

"Oh, heart! There's nothing of that kind of thing about me. I regard a woman as a picture or a statue. I dare say I shall marry some day, because men do; but I've no idea of losing myself about a woman."

"I'd lose myself ten times over for--"

"L. D.," said Cradell.

"That I would. And yet I know I shall never have her. I'm a jolly, laughing sort of fellow; and yet, do you know, Caudle, when that girl marries, it will be all up with me. It will, indeed."

"Do you mean that you'll cut your throat?"

"No; I shan't do that. I shan't do anything of that sort; and yet it will be all up with me."

"You are going down there in October;--why don't you ask her to have you?"

"With ninety pounds a year!" His grateful country had twice increased his salary at the rate of five pounds each year. "With ninety pounds a year, and twenty allowed me by my mother!"

"She could wait, I suppose. I should ask her, and no mistake. If one is to love a girl, it's no good one going on in that way!"

"It isn't much good, certainly," said Johnny Eames. And then they reached the door of the Income-tax Office, and each went away to his own desk.

From this little dialogue, it may be imagined that though Mrs. Roper was as good as her word, she was not exactly the woman whom Mrs.

Eames would have wished to select as a protecting angel for her son.

But the truth I take to be this, that protecting angels for widows'

sons, at forty-eight pounds a year, paid quarterly, are not to be found very readily in London. Mrs. Roper was not worse than others of her class. She would much have preferred lodgers who were respectable to those who were not so,--if she could only have found respectable lodgers as she wanted them. Mr. and Mrs. Lupex hardly came under that denomination; and when she gave them up her big front bedroom at a hundred a year, she knew she was doing wrong. And she was troubled, too, about her own daughter Amelia, who was already over thirty years of age. Amelia was a very clever young woman, who had been, if the truth must be told, first young lady at a millinery establishment in Manchester. Mrs. Roper knew that Mrs. Eames and Mrs. Cradell would not wish their sons to associate with her daughter. But what could she do? She could not refuse the shelter of her own house to her own child, and yet her heart misgave her when she saw Amelia flirting with young Eames.

"I wish, Amelia, you wouldn't have so much to say to that young man."

"Laws, mother."

"So I do. If you go on like that, you'll put me out of both my lodgers."

"Go on like what, mother? If a gentleman speaks to me, I suppose I'm to answer him? I know how to behave myself, I believe." And then she gave her head a toss. Whereupon her mother was silent; for her mother was afraid of her.

CHAPTER V.

ABOUT L. D.

Apollo Crosbie left London for Allington on the 31st of August, intending to stay there four weeks, with the declared intention of recruiting his strength by an absence of two months from official cares, and with no fixed purpose as to his destiny for the last of those two months. Offers of hospitality had been made to him by the dozen. Lady Hartletop's doors, in Shropshire, were open to him, if he chose to enter them. He had been invited by the Countess De Courcy to join her suite at Courcy Castle. His special friend Montgomerie Dobbs had a place in Scotland, and then there was a yachting party by which he was much wanted. But Mr. Crosbie had as yet knocked himself down to none of these biddings, having before him when he left London no other fixed engagement than that which took him to Allington. On the first of October we shall also find ourselves at Allington in company with Johnny Eames; and Apollo Crosbie will still be there,--by no means to the comfort of our friend from the Income-tax Office.

Johnny Eames cannot be called unlucky in that matter of his annual holiday, seeing that he was allowed to leave London in October, a month during which few chose to own that they remain in town. For myself, I always regard May as the best month for holiday-making; but then no Londoner cares to be absent in May. Young Eames, though he lived in Burton Crescent and had as yet no connection with the West End, had already learned his lesson in this respect. "Those fellows in the big room want me to take May," he had said to his friend Cradell. "They must think I'm uncommon green."

"It's too bad," said Cradell. "A man shouldn't be asked to take his leave in May. I never did, and what's more, I never will. I'd go to the Board first."

Eames had escaped this evil without going to the Board, and had succeeded in obtaining for himself for his own holiday that month of October, which, of all months, is perhaps the most highly esteemed for holiday purposes. "I shall go down by the mail-train to-morrow night," he said to Amelia Roper, on the evening before his departure.

At that moment he was sitting alone with Amelia in Mrs. Roper's back drawing-room. In the front room Cradell was talking to Mrs. Lupex; but as Miss Spruce was with them, it may be presumed that Mr. Lupex need have had no cause for jealousy.

"Yes," said Amelia; "I know how great is your haste to get down to that fascinating spot. I could not expect that you would lose one single hour in hurrying away from Burton Crescent."

Amelia Roper was a tall, well-grown young woman, with dark hair and dark eyes;--not handsome, for her nose was thick, and the lower part of her face was heavy, but yet not without some feminine attractions.

Her eyes were bright; but then, also, they were mischievous. She could talk fluently enough; but then, also, she could scold. She could assume sometimes the plumage of a dove; but then again she could occasionally ruffle her feathers like an angry kite. I am quite prepared to acknowledge that John Eames should have kept himself clear of Amelia Roper; but then young men so frequently do those things which they should not do!

"After twelve months up here in London one is glad to get away to one's own friends," said Johnny.

"Your own friends, Mr. Eames! What sort of friends? Do you suppose I don't know?"

"Well, no. I don't think you do know."

"L. D.!" said Amelia, showing that Lily had been spoken of among people who should never have been allowed to hear her name. But perhaps, after all, no more than those two initials were known in Burton Crescent. From the tone which was now used in naming them, it was sufficiently manifest that Amelia considered herself to be wronged by their very existence.

"L. S. D.," said Johnny, attempting the line of a witty, gay young spendthrift. "That's my love--pounds, shillings, and pence; and a very coy mistress she is."

"Nonsense, sir. Don't talk to me in that way. As if I didn't know where your heart was. What right had you to speak to me if you had an L. D. down in the country?"

It should be here declared on behalf of poor John Eames that he had not ever spoken to Amelia--he had not spoken to her in any such phrase as her words seemed to imply. But then he had written to her a fatal note of which we will speak further before long, and that perhaps was quite as bad,--or worse.

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Johnny. But the laugh was assumed, and not assumed with ease.

"Yes, sir; it's a laughing matter to you, I dare say. It is very easy for a man to laugh under such circumstances;--that is to say, if he is perfectly heartless,--if he's got a stone inside his bosom instead of flesh and blood. Some men are made of stone, I know, and are troubled with no feelings."

"What is it you want me to say? You pretend to know all about it, and it wouldn't be civil in me to contradict you."

"What is it I want? You know very well what I want; or rather, I don't want anything. What is it to me? It is nothing to me about L.

D. You can go down to Allington and do what you like for me. Only I hate such ways."

"What ways, Amelia?"

"What ways! Now, look here, Johnny: I'm not going to make a fool of myself for any man. When I came home here three months ago--and I wish I never had;"--she paused here a moment, waiting for a word of tenderness; but as the word of tenderness did not come, she went on--"but when I did come home, I didn't think there was a man in all London could make me care for him,--that I didn't. And now you're going away, without so much as hardly saying a word to me." And then she brought out her handkerchief.

"What am I to say, when you keep on scolding me all the time?"

"Scolding you!--And me too! No, Johnny, I ain't scolding you, and don't mean to. If it's to be all over between us, say the word, and I'll take myself away out of the house before you come back again.

I've had no secrets from you. I can go back to my business in Manchester, though it is beneath my birth, and not what I've been used to. If L. D. is more to you than I am, I won't stand in your way. Only say the word."

L. D. was more to him than Amelia Roper,--ten times more to him. L.

D. would have been everything to him, and Amelia Roper was worse than nothing. He felt all this at the moment, and struggled hard to collect an amount of courage that would make him free.

"Say the word," said she, rising on her feet before him, "and all between you and me shall be over. I have got your promise, but I'd scorn to take advantage. If Amelia hasn't got your heart, she'd despise to take your hand. Only I must have an answer."

It would seem that an easy way of escape was offered to him; but the lady probably knew that the way as offered by her was not easy to such an one as John Eames.

"Amelia," he said, still keeping his seat.