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be so close and double-faced that at times it wasn’t easy to keep one’s bauds off his 'ed. However, what with the exertion of my humble abilities, and what with the help of a mutual friend by the name of Mr. Tony Weevle (who is of a high aristocratic turn, and has your Ladyship’s portrait always hanging up in his room), I have now reasons for an apprehension, as to which I come to put your Ladyship upon your guard. First, will your Ladyship allow me to ask you whether you have had any strange visitors this morning? I don’t mean fashionable visitors, but such visitors, for instance, as Miss Barbary’s old servant, or as a person without the use of his lower extremities, carried up-stairs similarly to a Guy?”

“No!”

“Then I assure your Ladyship that such visitors have been here, and have been received here. Because I saw them at the door, and waited at the corner of the square till they came out, and took half-an-hour’s turn afterwards to avoid them.”

“What have I to do with that, or what have you? I do not understand you. What do you mean?”

“Your Ladyship, I come to put you on your guard. There may be no occasion for it. Very well. Then I have only done my best to keep my promise to Miss Summerson. I strongly suspect (from what Small has dropped, and from what we have corkscrewed out of him) that those letters I was to have brought to your Ladyship were not destroyed when I supposed they were. That if there was anything to be blown upon, it is blown upon. That the visitors I have alluded to have been here this morning to make money of it. And that the money is made, or making.”

Mr. Guppy picks up his hat and rises.

“Your Ladyship, you know best, whether there’s anything in what I say, or whether there’s nothing. Something or nothing, I have acted up to Miss Summerson’s wishes in letting things alone, and in undoing what I had begun to do, as far as possible; that’s sufficient for me. In case I should be taking a liberty in putting your Ladyship on your guard when there’s no necessity for it, you will endeavour, I should hope, to outlive my presumption, and I shall endeavour to outlive your disapprobation. I now take my farewell of your Ladyship, and assure you that there’s no danger of your ever being waited on by me again.”

She scarcely acknowledges these parting words by any look; but when he has been gone a little while, she rings her bell.

“Where is Sir Leicester?”

Mercury reports that he is at present shut up in the library, alone.

“Has Sir Leicester had any visitors this morning?”

Several, on business. Mercury proceeds to a description of them, which has been anticipated by Mr. Guppy. Enough; he may go.

So! All is broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her husband knows his wrongs, her shame will be published—may be spreading while she thinks about it—and in addition to the thunderbolt so long foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an invisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy.

Her enemy he was, and she has often, often, often, wished him dead. Her enemy he is, even in his grave. This dreadful accusation comes upon