"If I had known a bit more about Society, I might not have come here quite so often."

"What's Society got to do with it, anyway?" suddenly asked Miss Dobbs, who was getting a trifle bored by the word.

"I don't know," said the young man, "but I thought it had."

"Why should you think so?"

"Hasn't it, Miss Cora?"

At this point, it seemed necessary for Miss Dobbs to regard the situation as a whole. A wrong move here might be fatal.

"Yes, I suppose it has," said she, trying very hard to keep from laughing in his face. "If you put it that way."

Again there was a pause. Henry Harper seemed to be overawed by this admission on the part of a lady of great experience.

"I make no claim"--Miss Dobbs felt that a little well-timed a.s.sistance was called for--"if that's what you mean. My reputation's gone, but as I am only a girl, without a shilling, who has to fight her own battle, of course it's not of the slightest consequence."

"That's just what I want to talk to you about," he said, with a simplicity that made her lip curl in spite of the strong will which ruled it. Zoe was right, it was cruelty to children.

"Talk away, then," said Miss Dobbs, with dreary and tragic coldness.

"I just want to do right. I admit I've done wrong. But what I've done, I've done in ignorance. I didn't know it would be against your reputation for me to come here constant, and to take you on the river, and go with you to the theater and the Coliseum."

"No, I don't suppose you did," said Cora, holding her hand very carefully now that he had been such a fool as to put a weapon in it.

"No, I suppose not, Mr. Harper."

The "Mr." was stressed very slightly, but she felt him flinch a little.

"Well, Miss Cora," he said huskily, "it's like this. I just want to do right by you as any other gentleman would."

"Oh, do you, Mr. Harper." She fixed him with the eye of a basilisk.

"Yes," he said, and the sweat broke out on his forehead. "Whatever it's got to be."

She sensed the forehead rather than saw it. Every nerve in her was now alert. Yet the desire uppermost was to spit in his face, or to dash her fist in it with all the strength she had, but at such a moment she could not afford to give rein to the woman within. She must bide her time. The fish was hooked, but it still remained to land it.

"Well, Mr. Harper, I am sure you are most kind. But you know better than I can tell you that there is only one thing you can do under the circ.u.mstances." And Miss Dobbs suddenly laughed in Mr. Harper's face, in order to show that she was not such a fool as to treat his heroics seriously.

"What's that, Miss Cora?" he asked, huskily.

"What's that, Mr. Harper? What innocence! I wonder where you was brought up?"

"Don't ask that, Miss Cora." He could have bitten out his tongue almost before the words had slipped from it.

But Miss Cora was not going to be sidetracked at this critical moment by a matter so trivial as Mr. Harper's upbringing.

"You take away a straight girl's reputation, you as good as ruin her, and then you come and ask her what you should do about it. What ho, she b.u.mps!" And Miss Dobbs, with an irrelevance fully equal to her final remark, suddenly flung herself down to the further detriment of the broken-springed sofa.

Mr. Harper, however, was able to recognize this as a cry of the soul of a lady in agony.

"If you think I ought to marry you," he said, with dry lips, "I'll do it."

Miss Dobbs, flopping on the sofa, sat up suddenly with a complete change of manner.

"It's not what I think, Mr. Harper," she said. "That don't matter.

It's what you think that matters. If a man is a gentleman, he don't ask those sort of things."

"No, I suppose he doesn't," said Mr. Harper, who suddenly felt and saw the great force of this. "Miss Dobbs ... Cora.... I ... I ... will you marry me, Miss Cora?"

The answer of Miss Cora was to rise from the sofa in the stress of feminine embarra.s.sment. But she did not fall into his arms, as some ladies might have done; she did not even change color. She merely said in an extremely practical voice--

"Harry, you've done right, and I'm glad you've acted the toff. There was those who said you wouldn't, but we'll not mention names. However, all's well that ends well. And the sooner we get married the better."

He made no reply. But a slow, deadly feeling had begun to creep along his spine.

"Do you mind where we are married, Harry?"

"No," he said, gently, with faraway eyes.

"I'm all for privacy," said Miss Dobbs, in her practical voice. "I hope you are."

"Whatever's agreeable to you is agreeable to me." He seemed to feel that that was good W. M. Thackeray.

"Very well, then, Harry, tomorrow morning at eleven I'll call for you, and we'll toddle round to the Circus and see what the Registrar has to say to us."

"If that's agreeable to you, it's agreeable to me," he said, sticking doggedly to his conception of the man of the world and the English gentleman.

"And now, Harry---" But Cora suddenly stopped in the very act of advancing upon him. He had read her purpose, and she had read his eyes; moreover, she had read the look which those eyes had been unable to veil. With the sagacity upon which Miss Cora Dobbs prided herself--if she happened to be perfectly sober--she decided to postpone any oscular demonstration of regard for Harry until the next day.

XV

It was not until Tuesday evening that Henry Harper informed the old man who had treated him with such kindness that he had decided to give up his situation. Mr. Rudge was not surprised. Now that the young man's time had become so valuable his master disinterestedly approved this step, although he would regret the loss of such a trustworthy a.s.sistant. Henry Harper then felt called upon to explain that he had married Cora that afternoon, and that he was about to transfer his belongings to No. 106, King John's Mansions.

"You don't mean to say you have gone and got married?" said Mr. Rudge.

"Yes, sir. But Cora wanted it to be kept very quiet, else I should have told you before."

"Cora who?" asked his master, pushing up his spectacles on to his forehead.

"Cora Dobbs."

"Do you mean that niece of Mrs. Greaves?"

"Yes, sir."