A NE WMARKE T S TOR V. 1 3 



can go to her with my kisses warm upon your hps. Listen ! 

 Do you not hear the clocks striking eight ? You are dressed for 

 dinner, and the lady will be waiting.' 



He made a feint of sudden recollection : ' By Jove, you are 

 right; I must be off. The house is in the trees, just over there. 

 Kow, be a sensible girl, Jess, and let's part friends. If Satanas 

 wnns to-morrow you sha'n't have cause to regret your share in 

 the business. We'll be meeting somewhere hereabouts in the 

 morning. Ta-ta till then.' 



He waved his hand and strode away, humming an air from 

 Pinafore. Deliberately wicked, you think. O, no. Heartless ? 

 By no means. Only brought up to follow a fashionable code of 

 morals — to believe that certain breakages are the fault of the 

 china's frailty, which no one expects the breaker to pay for — 

 reared in the confidence that wild oats bear no retributive seed 

 in any futurity. A hopeful scepticism of any Nemesis distin- 

 guishes the young philosophers of the nineteenth century beyond 

 any other age. 



Jess arrives at home, creeping noiselessly up the staircase, 

 groping in the darkness for the balustrade. She wonders 

 vaguely why there is no light. The sitting-room door is ajar, 

 and only the dull embers burn in the grate ; the room is empty, 

 and there is no trace of anyfsupper. She rings the bell sharply, 

 and hears it tinkling long and quickly in some lower back 

 region. The slipshod handmaiden presently stumbles up the 

 stairs. 



' Why is there no lamp, and no supper ?' 



' Mr. Dallas he said as 'ow he wouldn't want no supper, and 

 as that you'd a-gone to bed.' 



Jess looks at the girl fiercely, but controls her voice, 



' Did he say where he had gone when he went out ?' 



The damsel looks dubiously round the room, even casting a 

 sohciting glance at the dirty ceiling. Jess stamps her foot ; then, 

 in sudden confusion, the girl catches the eye of the jockey's 

 sister, and, trembling, she begins to cry. 



' The man he giv me a shillin', and said as 'ow I wur to give 

 this paper to Mr. Dallas unbeknown to the lady ; and you 

 wasn't in the room, and I give it ; and he went out a-callin' to me 

 down-stairs as he wouldn't want no supper, and he'd got the 

 latch-key.' 



She sobs, and shakes out her confession in a scries of jerks. 



