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listening, and what words I heard meant nothing to me.

me to see you. What have you to say?"

"It is difficult talking in the crowd of the street.

You asked

We had better

walk this way; it will take us along the river, and be all on your Well, I have not been idle; I have been to

way home. Hillswick."

"So you told me yesterday. I am sorry if you have been taking real trouble for Alan, though, of course, I must thank you. What have you learned that I need know, if I do not even yet know all ?” "Miss Reid, I will not be thanked by you. All that I do isyou know what I told you three days ago. when you hear that I have-failed."

"Failed? In what had you to fail?" "I have the worst news for you will."

You will not thank me

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your father left no

For the first time in this story Gideon Skull told a lie-a direct, downright lie. Clearly his association with Helen was. corrupting his honesty. But she had already felt all the guilt for both: mere imitation did not prove hard.

"Well?" asked Helen.

"Do you mean to say you have forgotten what that means?" "What have you found, then?"

"Is it not more than enough to have found? The worst of all ?"

"I knew that there was no will. What else does our whole life mean? I don't understand. You ask to see me-only to tell me that you have nothing to tell-nothing to say? How could a visit to Hillswick make clearer to you what all the world knew before ?”

"I told you," said Gideon humbly and patiently, "that I would come back to you within three days and let you know how much hope I had found. I did hope-sanguinely, even. I could not believe that there could be really no will. It seemed impossible. Well, since you needed no convincing, I need tell you nothing of the chains of argument which, at Hillswick, led me to the same conclusion. Rational men don't hide wills away in corners; the lawyers are sure to know of them, even if they don't have them in their own hands, and Waldron had no opportunity of finding one and putting it in the fire. No; there is no will."

"This is all you asked to see me for?" asked Helen, feeling almost disappointed, though she had expected nothing. It was hard that she should have had to pass through so much shame for no end. But she was by no means looking downward, and a glimpse of his

grave and down-turned face, in which she could read nothing but the shame of a strong man who has boasted of his will and strength beforehand, and has found them impotent, made her feel guilty of ingratitude.

"Well, I do thank you," she said, "for all you hoped and tried to do for Alan. I am glad-in a way-that you are convinced there is nothing for any-outside-friend to do. You do know that nobody thinks you to blame. . . . and if you had been . . . . you have tried every way to undo it all. It is no one's fault that there is no way. If we do not happen to meet again————”

"Not meet again?" he asked, really startled; for it was the last point at which he had been aiming, and the words, though he would have known how to take them at their worth from all such women as he had known, seemed to mean something when spoken by Helen Reid. It was not the first time during these last days that his heart had been startling him. It was a heavy, cumbrous muscle, Gideon Skull's heart, and its struggles into life were as hard as those of mc st hearts never are but when they are dying. But it was a heart, after all, and he was a man. He came near even to self-deception, to feeling as if he were dealing truly and openly with her, and to pitying, in a hungry sort of way, the pain he supposed his tidings were giving her. He could hardly resist the temptation of believing them him self, though they were lies. Love must needs take its one form, and it will somehow manage to wear that one form and no other. "Not meet again?" he repeated: "but we most surely shall. Have you forgotten what you told me you are living for-to get back Copleston for your brother, and that by any means? You are not one to take up a life's purpose in one moment and drop it in the next, if I know you at all."

You made a resolve when are not likely to drop it Belief and knowledge are

"I don't see how you can know me at all." "Perhaps you don't see it; but I do. you believed there was no will. You because you now know there is no will. practically much the same thing, I suppose; and that means-you will need me. It is idle to talk of our not meeting again. You have a brother, and I have-well, an enemy. Our motives are different, but our end is the same. We both mean that, in one way or another, Victor Waldron is not to keep Copleston."

One must not shut one's eyes to human nature out of any tenderness for Helen-if such a thing still lingers. One cannot help remembering that she was walking by the side of the one man she had yet seen who made her feel that he was strong and resolute, and

that he had a will, and that his will meant something. She could not know how little strength, will, and resolution had hitherto meant with him, though she was right enough in her instinct that he had them all; and more right than even instinct could tell her, that, if he had never had them before, he had them now. She was inspiring a knight-for so common a thing there is no need that the lady should be the beau ideal of her sex, or the knight a Bayard. He may even be a struggling adventurer, preying upon the refuse and garbage of the world's great doings, like Gideon, and she may be no better or nobler than Helen Reid. It may be that the brigand, or even the pickpocket, draws as much inspiration of strength or address from the eyes or voice of his mistress as the knight errant from those of his lady-and of the same kind, though to a somewhat different end. And surely the woman does not live who does not know when and whom she inspires, and who, when she knows it, can help a little pride. She may feel a little frightened, also, but in that case she feels yet more proud. Helen had been too much used all her life to seeing broad shoulders and strong arms to think anything about them, or to take them as the outward and visible signs of any. thing beyond themselves. But she felt that there was something about Gideon's build which made it the sign of something to which she had not been accustomed, either in her father or in Alan. It was much more than that he by no means fulfilled her ideas of a gentleman. She had no objection to him on that score. The circumstances of her own birth prevented any pride; and then she had taken Waldron for a gentleman-so huge a mistake, that she might be equally mistaken in taking Gideon Skull for

none.

"Yes," she answered him absently. "But we have different ends and different ways. You can have no hand in anything I may find to do; and I, heaven knows, can be of less use to you than you can be to me. Mr. Waldron does happen to be my enemy. But he is too mean for hating. Why do you hate him?"

"You do hate him, Miss Reid. A girl like you does not hate or love by halves. You hate him with all your soul. And I—you ask me why I hate him? Who does not hate hypocrites, and scoundrels, and liars? I can't content myself with looking down on snakes. They are more dangerous than tigers. . . . . We are something more than allies, Miss Reid, you and I. You mean work, and I mean work too. We must not be in the dark about one another. Two people looking for the same thing in the dark are apt to jostle, and to spoil everything. That must not be. At

present, I own myself at sea, without a plan. I am thrown out by the want of that will. But you have one, and I have a right to help you."

Helen certainly began to be a little afraid of the honest tradesman whom she had believed herself able to twist round her little finger. He was taking ells without having been allowed inches, and now he was claiming them as his due. She by no means wanted an ally who would claim a right to her confidence, would compel her to speak out what she was not reconciled to feeling, and probably end by sliding into the place of director and master.

"I have no plan," said she.

"No?"

"No. And if I had-it should be my own. If I wanted help"

"You would come to me. Miss Reid-you distrust me. Why?"

"Indeed I do nothing of the kind. There-we have said all that has to be said, and done all that can be done. Thank you for all your trouble and all your good will. This is my way home, I think. Good-bye."

Yours is still several turnings instant that I think you are

"No; it is not your way home yet. farther on. Do you suppose for one giving up Copleston? And do you think I can stand by and see a girl like you, who knows nothing of the world-thank God!— preparing to get aground on all sorts of quicksands and run her head against all sorts of stone walls? I don't guess what you mean to do, for I'll own you're likely to be ten times cleverer in laying plans than I am. But laying plans is one thing, and carrying them out is another. You must have a man's counsel. And since your brother is gone, there is nobody to give it you but me."

Helen might have smiled at the idea of any man's thinking he could help her in carrying out her half-made scheme. But he had brought her face to face with it, and she could not smile. Though she felt what it was well enough, there is probably no reader of her story who could not put it into words better than she. It was to fascinate the enemy, obtain, by craft or surprise, the secret of his fraud, and then save herself-if she could-from selling herself for Alan. Of course, if she failed she must fail; but no absolutely last resource ever looks desperate: hope must hang to something, and if there be nothing left but a straw, then to a straw as completely as if the straw were a barge. How could she breathe a whisper of such a scheme even to a dearest friend who shared her inmost wishes with

her? She knew well enough what she would have called any other girl who should make any such confession-outrageously vain would have been her lightest word. And she had been asked, nay, ordered to make her confession to Gideon Skull !

"I hate Waldron much," he said, "but I should hate myself ten thousand times more if I let you do yourself any harm. If it were any girl, I should feel very much the same," added the Quixotescorner, without being in the least troubled by his want of consistency. It did not even strike him that the sentiment was not original and entirely his own; and one feels wonderfully honest and generous while one is saying generous things. He did not wish to see Helen Reid become quite of his world-he only wanted to find her sufficiently of it to be reasonably within reach of his arm. "Promise me, when you find yourself in any trouble, to trust to me. Forget, if you like, how much I am with you in heart; remember only that I am your brother's friend. Whenever you want help, send a line to me at the Argus, and I will never fail you be quite sure. Whenever I have anything to say, I shall let you know it.”

"There must be an end of this," thought Helen, wishing she had left herself any right to be angry at the suggestion of a secret correspondence with Gideon Skull. "We shall be leaving London in a few days," said she. "Don't think I don't trust you, but our ways do not run together, and——”

"You are going to leave London?"

"Yes, now that my brother is gone. We shall most likely be staying with our friends the Meyricks--"

"The Meyricks, of Thorp End--? Within a drive of Copleston?"

She had spoken of her intended visit as her best open reason for leaving town, so that she might leave Gideon no room for further questioning. Nor did he question her further. He only fell into silent rumination over what she could possibly be intending to do. "If she's been getting any notions of that will on her own account," he thought," and if she's going down there to pump Uncle Christopher" The idea led to nothing in particular, and he thought again. Her going to stay with her friends might mean nothing, but then it might mean a great deal. Gideon was beginning to feel a martyr to mystery. He had got to the bottom of his uncle's, only to be plunged into a new one by Helen. Perhaps it was nothing. But while he thought, his eyes found their inevitable way to Helen's face, and he could not reconcile with a single possible view of human nature the idea of a girl like her-keen, eager, and

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