"On the contrary I am deeply interested--and you say you have no friends at all in London?"

"None!" she replied with a forlorn sigh that went to his heart.

After a pause he spoke again in earnest tones.

"I wish you would allow me to become a friend. I think it would be very foolish of us to separate to-day without arranging any plans about meeting again. We have already agreed that conventionality ought sometimes to be dispensed with. Here surely is a very good case in point. I should like exceedingly to see you again; I should be very sorry if we did not continue this friendship. Have you any objection?"

"Of course not. I should very much like it," she replied looking at once into his eyes. "The idea is charming to me. Ah! if you knew how terrible it is to have no friend, no one to confide in, you would feel for me I know."

"I find my own life a little lonely too sometimes," he said, "I am a barrister--"

"A barrister!" she interrupted. "Ah! I have long wished to know a barrister. I have always thought they must be such clever men."

"Well, I suppose we are quite up to the other professions. But now I think, as we have settled that we are to be friends, it is not worth our while to delay about it. Let us imagine we have been friends quite a long time--and will you do me the honour of dining with me to-night?"

"Dine with you!" she exclaimed, as if startled by the idea.

"Yes--why not? It will enable us to learn more of each other. We will dine at a restaurant, and if you like we will go to a theatre afterwards."

She only hesitated a moment, then replied, "You are very kind--you don't know what a treat you are proposing to me. I have been so very dull of late--No!" she cried joyfully, "I cannot refuse you. The prospect is too delightful."

They pa.s.sed an exceedingly pleasant evening together. When the play was over he put her in a cab and they separated. She would not tell him where she lived, but gave him an address at a stationer's shop to which he might write; and also made an appointment to meet him on the following day.

He walked home aflame with a pa.s.sion which he fondly believed was love.

He considered that he had fallen into a very lucky adventure. Knowing well the weakness of his own character, he argued with himself that it would be an excellent thing for him to be fond of a really nice little woman like this. An intrigue of this kind would keep him straight. It had always been one of his maxims that to have a mistress was a grand thing for a man; it settled him, and preserved him from dissipation.

It was perhaps a rather wild thing to hope to find salvation in such a union as the one he contemplated; nevertheless it has happened to many men of his nature to be regenerated by a mistress.

There are certain men--not of the meanest order--whose happiness and success in life, or misery and failure, entirely depend on women. Of an amorous disposition, love is a necessity to these. If such a man take a good woman as his mate, he is indeed happy in her. She makes him a G.o.d; she stimulates him to n.o.ble endeavour; encourages him in the dark hours; and raises to success a life that would have yielded to temporary failure.

Happy too is the woman who has thus completed the nature of the powerful weak man, happy in that her benign influence has made a being intellectually so far her superior yet morally her inferior, admirable instead of despicable. Happy too is she, in that the man knows it, and his grateful love burns true and holy until death.

But the bad woman can as easily drag down such a nature, as a good woman can enn.o.ble it. A crisis had now come to the life of the barrister. He had already checked himself on his downward career, he was struggling after the lost good. Were this new friend of his to prove a woman of the right sort, he might probably still become a distinguished man in his profession or in literature.

But, alas! the Fates were against him.

For it happened that this young lady whom the barrister had met was no other than our old acquaintance Susan Riley--the youngest member of the Inner Circle of the Secret Society--the one who had known the pains and joys of motherhood.

Cat that she was, she had a cat-like love for prowling about in the evening with no definite purpose, but in search of adventure. She might be often seen in Regent Street in the afternoon. She would on occasion allow strange gentlemen to enter into conversation with her. Ah! how modest and demure she would be at first! By-and-bye the befooled man would become infatuated. Dinners, suppers, bonnets, gloves and jewellery would be showered upon her; but at last when the swain thought it full time that his amours should advance a step further, and leave the cold regions of Platonic love she would as likely as not turn and laugh him to scorn, leave him, and start to pastures new in search of fresh game.

She could talk low and sweetly, this cunning beauty, and her blue eyes would so well lie of love as they looked up timidly from under their curling lashes. By the very manner with which she would draw on her glove, she could make a man believe she loved him.

The result of the adventure at the academy was that she and the barrister saw a good deal of each other. Their friendship ripened. She played her cards cunningly, and soon made her conquest complete.

She told him a lamentable tale about a runaway husband--a clergyman, she said. He looked the name up in an old clergy-list, and there indeed it was, so he believed her tale. She filled him with pity for her forlorn state.

A very considerable proportion of Hudson's income found its way, if not directly, indirectly, into her pockets. She wheedled him well, though he was no fool. But what young man can look through the glamour that surrounds a beautiful and clever woman? He deceives himself willingly, and believes she is an angel, though he knows how silly he is to believe so.

Susan understood her man, and she thought it worth her while to take considerable trouble over his conquest. Cautiously she wove her web around him. She did not yield her heart (?) too soon, but kept him for some time in suspense.

How candid she appeared to be! One day she placed her daintily-gloved hand gently on his arm, and looking openly into his eyes, said: "Ah! Mr.

Hudson, it is very kind of you to take so much interest in me--to do so much for me; but I will not deceive you; you must not speak to me again of love. I cannot love. I am deeply grateful--I like you very much--but I will never, never love you!"

He poured out a flood of wild protestations of undying, boundless affection; he implored, lamented, made oaths, and so forth, as is usual with men under like circ.u.mstances.

"No!" she went on with a sigh--"no, Mr. Hudson, I dare not love again. I know how sweet is love--no one better. Sometimes I think I was created only to love and be loved. But after that one terrible disappointment, I dare never love again. Oh, Mr. Hudson!"--looking at him with swimming eyes, and speaking in thrilling tones--"how can I ever trust a man again?--to trust and be deceived--to love and then to lose! Oh, it would kill me! I can never allow my poor heart to love again."

Then of course followed fresh protestations and oaths of constancy from the victim, to which she only replied by a piteous sigh.

This sort of thing went on for a fortnight or so; then she got sick of it. She thought that there had been quite enough of this preliminary play; and that the time had come for her to yield gracefully to his importunity.

One fine Sunday afternoon, they were walking together in Kew gardens.

"Do you not like me a little bit?" asked Hudson, imploringly.

"Of course I like you. You are my dearest--my only friend!"

"But cannot you love me, my darling? Oh! indeed you can trust me--this is no boy's love of mine! I am old enough to know my own mind. I love you as few men ever loved a woman, as I never knew that I myself could love. You are the one thing in the whole world to me. Trust me--this is no pa.s.sing fancy."

A profound sigh was her sole reply. She was rather proud of her sighs; they were wonderfully expressive.

"Cannot you love me a _little_, Edith?" She called herself Edith to her young men as being a more euphonious name than Susan.

Her answer this time was a nervous stirring up of the sand with her parasol, and a downcast look and silence.

"Oh, Edith! I do so hunger for your love," he urged again. "Can you not give me a little for all this love of mine? Oh, my darling! if you can only give me back a hundredth part of my love for you, I shall be satisfied."

She turned her head--as if to conceal her emotion, but really to hide a smile that she could not altogether suppress, having a strong sense of the ridiculous--and said, in accents of piteous pleading:

"Don't! don't, Tom!--don't take advantage of my weakness."

"Then you _do_ love me?" he cried, pa.s.sionately.

"It is cruel of you to force me to confess my feelings. Oh, Tom!--I can't help it!--now you know all!--I _do_ love you!"

She had still a few pretty scruples which she allowed him to talk her out of gradually. It was very wrong, she urged, for her to accept him as a lover--she a married woman!--her husband still alive! But the eloquent barrister managed to persuade her to the contrary.

It was a grotesque burlesque of love at which these two were playing.

She, of course, felt no love whatever for the man. Love was a sentiment unknown to her, though she had the voluptuous nature of a Messalina. She also knew that his was not a real unselfish love for her. He himself was more or less conscious of this latter fact. This new intrigue disappointed him in a way; he instinctively felt that there was something wrong about this pretty woman--that her society would probably do him more harm than good.

His affection for her was pa.s.sionate enough, but it would not bear a.n.a.lysis--and he knew it--being made up as it was of equal parts of l.u.s.t and vanity.

A man who has gone mad over a girl in this way will squander everything he has on her, not because he loves her, not even spending it so as to benefit her, but merely in display--in suppers, dress, and folly, whereby the vanity of both is gratified.