"Harry," said Miss Press, with a dramatic change of tone as soon as the hostess had retired with the tea things, "Zoe and I have to talk to you very serious. Haven't we, Zoe?"

Miss Bonser nodded impressively.

"You are not playing fair with Cora, Harry."

During the slight pause which followed this statement, a look of fawnlike bewilderment flitted across the eyes of the Sailor.

"You are breaking her heart," said Miss Press, with tragic simplicity.

"Yes, dear," came the thrilling whisper of Miss Bonser.

"That's true."

"We are telling you this, Harry," said Miss Press, "because we think it is something you ought to know. You think so, don't you, dear?"

"I do, dear," said Miss Bonser.

"Cora is one of the best that ever stepped," said Miss Press. "She has a heart of gold, she is a girl in a thousand. It would be a black shame to spoil her life. You think that, don't you, dear?"

"Yes, dear," said Miss Bonser emotionally.

Mr. Harper was completely out of his depth. He didn't know in the least what they were talking about.

"Forgive us, Harry, for taking it upon ourselves in this way," said Miss Bonser, in a kind, quiet voice. "We are all for a bit of fun, but we can't stand by and see a good girl suffering in silence, can we, Gertie?"

"No, dear," said Gertie, with pathos.

Both ladies eyed him cautiously. He was so innocent, he was such a simple child that they could almost have found it in their hearts to pity him.

"We feel bound to mention it, Harry," said Miss Press. "Poor Cora can't take her oats or anything. She has to have a sleeping draught now."

"And she's getting that thin, poor thing," chimed the plaintive Miss Bonser.

The Sailor's perplexity grew.

"If you ask me," said Miss Press, suddenly taking a higher note, "it's up to you, Harry, to play the gentleman." Watching the color change in his face, she knew she was on the target now. "A gentleman don't play fast and loose, if you ask me."

"At least, not the sort we are used to," whispered Miss Bonser, in a superb pianissimo.

"It's Lord Caradoc and Pussy Pearson over again," said Miss Press. "But Caradoc being the goods married Pussy without making any bones about it. Harry, it's up to you to follow the example of a real gentleman. Forgive us for speaking plain."

Henry Harper glanced nervously from one lady to the other. A light was just beginning to dawn upon him.

"Cora's a straight girl," said Miss Bonser, taking up the parable. "She's one of the plucky ones, is Cora. It's a hard world for lonely girls like her, isn't it, Gert?"

"It is, dear," said Gert. "And one like Cora, whose position, as you might say, is uncertain, can't be too careful. You see, Harry, you have been coming to her flat for the best part of a year. You've been with her to the theater and the Coliseum; two Sundays ago she was seen with you on the river, and – well, she's been getting herself talked about, and that's all there is to it."

"Cora's a girl in a thousand," chimed Zoe the tactful. "She worships the ground you walk on, Harry."

A painfully startled look came suddenly into the eyes of the young man. Both ladies felt the look rather than saw it, and gave another sharp turn to the screw.

"Of course, you haven't known it, Harry," said Miss Press. "She wouldn't let you know it. But that's Cora."

"She would rather have died," said Zoe. "You will not breathe a word, of course, Harry. She would never forgive us if she knew we had let on."

"That's her pride," said Miss Press.

"And the way that poor thing cried her eyes out when you didn't turn up at tea time last Sunday as usual, the first time for nearly a year, well – " Language suddenly failed Miss Bonser. "A pretty job we had with her, hadn't we, Gert?"

So cunningly had the screw been applied, that Mr. Harper felt dazed. Suddenly Miss Bonser raised a finger of warning.

"Shush!" It was half a whisper, half a hiss. "Not a word. Here's Cora."

Miss Dobbs came in so abruptly that she nearly caught the injunction. And hardly had she entered, when Miss Press and Miss Bonser rose together and declared that they must really be going.

The hostess made a polite and conventional objection, but both ladies kissed her effusively and hustled her out into the passage.

"Dobby," Miss Press whispered excitedly, as soon as they had reached that dark and smelly draught distributor, "we've fairly put the half Nelson on him. Now go in and fix him up."

Miss Bonser and Miss Press tripped down the many unswept stone stairs of King John's Mansions, and Miss Dobbs closed the front door of No. 106. She then returned to Mr. Harper in the "boo-door."

"Well, Harry," she said, "why didn't you come last Sunday?"

Had the Sailor been true to his strongest instinct he would have fled. But he stayed where he was for several reasons, and of these the most cogent was quite a simple one. There was a will stronger than his own in the room just then.

Miss Bonser and Miss Press, as became a long experience of the chase, had done their work with efficiency. The Sailor had not guessed that this friendly and amusing and very agreeable lady – in spite of the "Damn you" – was so very much in love with him. It was a wholly unexpected issue, for which the young man was inclined to blame himself bitterly.

"Well, Harry," said Miss Dobbs, breaking suddenly upon a whirl of rather terrifying thoughts, "why didn't you come last Sunday?"

He was in a state of mental chaos, therefore to attempt to answer the question was useless.

"Why didn't oo, Harry?" Miss Dobbs suddenly felt that it was a case for force majeure. Very unexpectedly she flung her arms round his neck. Risking the rickety cane chair she sat heavily upon his knee, yet not so heavily as she might have done, and with a she-leopard's tenderness drew his head to her ample bosom.

A thrill of repugnance passed through Henry Harper, yet he was so fully engaged with a very pressing problem as hardly to know that it had.

"Kiss your Cora, Harry."

But his Cora kissed Harry instead. And as she did so, the unfailing instinct given to woman told her that that kiss was a mistake.

In the next instant, the fat arms had disengaged themselves from the young man's neck, and Miss Dobbs had slipped from his knee and was standing looking at him.

Her gesture was striking and picturesque; also she had the air of a tragedy queen.

"Harry," she said, with a catch in her voice, "you are breaking my heart."

The Sailor had already been informed of that. He had tried not to believe it, but facts were growing too strong for him. A superb tear was in the eyes of Miss Dobbs. The sight of it thrilled and startled him.

Twice before in his life had he seen tears in the eyes of a woman, and with his abnormal power of memory he vividly recalled each occasion now. The first time was in the eyes of Mother, the true woman he would always reverence, when she took off his clothes after his first flight from Blackhampton, and put him into a bath; the second time was in the eyes of Miss Foldal, and she also was a true woman whose memory he would always honor, when she said good-bye on the night of the second departure from the city of his birth. But the tears in the eyes of Mother and Miss Foldal were not as the superb and terrible tear in the eye of Miss Cora Dobbs.

"Don't think I blame you, Harry," said that lady with a Jocasta-like note, trying to keep the bitterness out of her tone. "I'm only a lonely and unprotected girl who will soon be on the shelf, but that's no fault of yours. Yet, somehow, I thought you were different. Somehow, I thought you was a gentleman."

Miss Dobbs had no illusions on that point, but she well knew where the shoe was going to pinch.

"I'll be a mark and a laughing stock," said the tragic Cora, "as poor Pussy was before Caradoc made up his mind to marry her. While he was plain Bill Jackson nothing was good enough for Pussy. Used to take her to the Coliseum and on the river in the summer, and used to come to her flat a bit lower down the Avenue to take tea with her and her friends every Sunday of his life. And then suddenly Bill came into the title, and poor Pussy got a miss from my lord. We all thought at first she would go out of her mind. She worshiped the ground that Bill walked upon. Besides, she couldn't bear to be made a mark of by her friends; and being nothing but a straight girl there was always her reputation to consider. Poor Pussy had to take a sleeping draught every night for months. But Caradoc played cricket in the end as he was bound to do, being a gentleman by birth, and Pussy is now a countess with two children, a boy and a girl, and only last summer she invited me to go and spend a fortnight with her at her place in Ireland, but, of course, I couldn't, because I hadn't the clothes. Still, I'm glad for Pussy's sake. She was always one of the best, was Pussy. All's well that ends well, isn't it?" And Miss Jocasta Dobbs very abruptly broke down.

It was a breakdown of the most nerve-shattering kind. The tears streamed down her face. She struggled almost hysterically not to give way, yet the more she struggled, the more she did give way.

"Miss Dobbs," he gasped, huskily – he had known her a long and crowded year, but he had never ventured on Cora – "Miss Cora" – he had done it now! "I didn't mean nothing."

Better had he held his peace.

"You didn't mean anything!" There was a change in the voice of Jocasta. "You didn't mean anything, Mr. Harper? No, I suppose not."

The young man drew in his breath sharply. The tone of Miss Dobbs was edged like a knife.

"It was only a poor and unprotected girl with whom you might play the fool until you had made good. It was only a girl who valued her fair name, a girl who would have died rather than be made a mark of by her friends. I suppose now you are a big man and earning big money, you will take up with somebody else. Well, I'm not the one to grudge any girl her luck."

The sudden fall in the voice of Miss Dobbs and the half veiled look in her eyes somehow took Henry Harper back to the Auntie of his childhood. And it almost seemed that she also had in her hand a weapon which she knew well how to use.

"I thought I had a gentleman to deal with," said Miss Dobbs, brushing aside a tear, "but it was my mistake. However, it's never too late to learn." Her laugh seemed to strike him.

"I didn't mean to mislead you," mumbled the young man, who felt like a trapped and desperate animal. Yet when all was said, the emotion uppermost was not for himself. This woman was hurting him horribly, but it was the fact, as he thought, that he was hurting her still more without any intention of evil towards her, which now took possession of his mind. He would do anything to soften the pain he was unwittingly causing. It was not in his nature to hurt a living thing.

"I beg pardon, Miss Cora," he said, faintly, "I didn't mean nothing like that."

She turned upon him, a tigress, and rent him. Nor did he shrink from the wounds she dealt. It was no more than he deserved. He should have learned a little more about ladies and their fine feelings and their social outlook, before daring to go to tea at their private flats and to meet their friends; before daring to be seen with them at a public place like the Coliseum or in a boat on the river. He was receiving a much needed lesson. It was one he would never forget.

XIV

Henry Harper did not go to tea at King John's Mansions on the next Sunday afternoon. And on the following Sunday he stayed away too. Moreover, during the whole of that fortnight Miss Cora Dobbs did not call once at No. 249, Charing Cross Road.

This was a relief to the young man. He would not have known how to meet her had she come to the shop as usual. He was so shattered by the bolt from the blue that he didn't know in the least what to do.

Happily there was his work to distract him. Mr. Ambrose had suggested that he should write another tale for Brown's Magazine. He was to take his own time over the new story, bearing ever in mind the advice given him formerly, which he had turned to very good account; and in the meantime, his fancy could expand in the happy knowledge that the "Adventures of Dick Smith" were attracting attention in the magazine. Mr. Ambrose had already arranged for the story to appear as a book when its course had run in Brown's, and he was convinced – if prophecy was ever safe in literary matters – that real success awaited it.

Could Henry Harper have put Miss Cora Dobbs out of his thoughts, he might have been almost completely happy in planning and writing the "Further Adventures of Dick Smith." Aladdin's wonderful lamp was making his life a fairy tale. An incredible vista of fame and fortune was spreading before his eyes. Even Mr. Rudge had been stricken with awe by the check for three hundred pounds.

Yet, at the back of everything just now was a terrible feeling of indecision. There could be no doubt that the great world of which he knew so little, clearly looked to him "to act the gentleman." The phrase was that of the elegant and refined Miss Bonser and the dashing Miss Press, who mixed habitually with gentlemen, and therefore were in a position to speak with authority on such a delicate matter. And so plain was his duty that it had even percolated to Mrs. Greaves, who, in ways subtle and mysterious, seemed to be continually unbosoming herself to a similar tenor.

In the course of the third week of crisis, Mr. Harper's perplexities were greatly increased by a brief but emotional note, written on elegantly art-shaded notepaper, which had the name "Cora" with a ring round it engraved in the left-hand corner. It said:

DEAR HARRY,

Why haven't you been or written? I am feeling so low and miserable that unless you come to see me Sunday, the doctor says I shall have a bad breakdown.

Yours, CORA.

Somehow, this letter, couched in such grimly pathetic terms, seemed to leave the young man with no alternative. Therefore, on the following Sunday afternoon, at the usual hour, he was just able to screw up courage to knock at the door of No. 106, King John's Mansions.

He was rather surprised to find Cora in good health; certainly the tone of her letter had implied that such was not the case. She had no appearance of suffering. In tone and manner she was a little chastened, but that was all.

Miss Bonser and Miss Press were also there when Mr. Harper arrived. But their reception of him was so much more formal than was usual that a feeling of tension was at once created. It was as if these experienced ladies understood that some high issue was pending.

Each of them treated him in quite a different way from that which she had used before. In her own style, each was lofty and grande dame. It was no longer Harry, but Mr. Harper; and they shook hands with him without cordiality, but with quiet dignity, and said, "How do you do?"

Strange to say, Mr. Harper found this reception more to his liking than the less studied manner in which he was received as a rule. Now that he had not to meet persiflage and chaff, he was fairly cool and collected. The stately bow of Miss Press and the archly fashionable handshake of Miss Bonser were much less embarrassing than their habitual mode of attack.

This afternoon, Mr. Harper was treated as a chance acquaintance might have been by three fashionable ladies who knew the world better than they knew him. There was a subtle note of distance. This afternoon, Miss Press talked books and theaters, and talked them very well, although, to be sure, rather better about the latter than the former. Yet in Mr. Harper's judgment, her conversation was more improving than her usual mode of discourse. Had he not been in such a state of turmoil it would have been quite a pleasure to sit and listen, she talked so well about the things that were beginning to interest him intensely; also her manner of speaking was extremely refined.

Miss Bonser talked mainly about the Royal Academy of Arts. She knew a good deal about art, having studied it, although in what capacity she didn't state, before she went to the Maison Perry. Nevertheless, she had both fluency and point; she didn't like Leader so much as she liked Sargent; she spoke of values, composition, brushwork, draughtmanship, and it was really a pity that Mr. Harper was not easier in his mind, otherwise he could not have failed to be edified. As it was, Miss Press and Miss Bonser rose considerably in his estimation. He could have wished that they always hoisted themselves on these high subjects.

Both ladies, wearing white gloves and looking very comme il faut, went soon after five, as they had promised to go on to Lady Caradoc's. Mr. Harper felt quite sorry. They had talked so well about the things that interested him that somehow their distinguished departure left a void. As they got up to go, Mr. Harper, remembering a hint he had received from Miss Press, touching the behavior of a gentleman in such circumstances, sprang to the door, and with less awkwardness than usual, contrived to open it for them to pass out.

The ordeal he dreaded was now upon him. He was with Cora alone. However, much to his relief, there was no sign at present of "a bad breakdown."

For three weeks he had been living in a little private hell of indecision. But now there was a chance of winning through. His duty was not yet absolutely clear, but he was not without hope that it would become so. In that time he had been thinking very hard and very deep. And by some means, he had added a cubit to his stature since he stood last on that tea-stained hearthrug in the quasi-comfort of that overfurnished "boo-door." It was a new and enlarged Mr. Harper who now confronted a more composed and dignified Miss Dobbs.

"Well, Harry," said Miss Dobbs, "it is nice to see you here again."

He was touched by such a tone of magnanimity. Somehow, he felt that it was more than he deserved.

"How's the new story getting on?" There was not a sign of the breakdown at present. "Will it be as good as the old one?" This was a welcome return to her first phase of generous interest; to the Miss Dobbs of whom he had memories not wholly unpleasant.

"I think it is going to be better," he said gravely. "Much better. Anyway, I intend it to be."

"That's right. I like to hear that. Nothing like ambition. I suppose you'll get another three hundred for this one?"

"Five," said the young man. "That's if the editor likes it."

"My!" said Miss Dobbs, with an involuntary flash of the wary eyes. "And that's only for the serial."

"Yes."

"And, of course, you'll be able to bring it out as a book as well?"

"The editor has arranged for that already. For the present one, I mean."

"But you'll get paid for it extra, of course!"

"Oh yes."

"How much?" Miss Dobbs spoke carelessly, but her eyes were by no means careless.

"I'll get a shilling for every copy that's sold."

"And how many will they sell?"

"Nobody knows that," he said, and from his tone it seemed that aspect of the matter was unimportant.

"No, I expect not." Her tone coincided readily with his. "But I suppose a man like Stevenson or Bert Hobson would sell by the hundred thousand?"

"No idea," said the young man.

"But you ought to have an idea, Harry. It's very important. What you want is somebody with a head for business to look after your affairs."

He was inclined to accept this view of the matter, but there would be time to think of that when he really was selling in thousands, which, of course, could not be until the book was published.

"When will it be published?"

"Next week."

"Next week! And you are going to get a sure five hundred, apart from the book, for the story you are writing now?"

"If Mr. Ambrose likes it."

"Of course he'll like it. You must make it so good that he can't help liking it."

"I'll try, anyway."

Miss Dobbs grew thoughtful. She was inclined to believe, having regard to all the circumstances, that she had a difficult hand to play. Therefore, she began to arrange two or three of the leading cards in her mind. To be perfectly candid with herself, she could not help thinking, and her two friends had confirmed her in that view, that she had shown lack of judgment in the cards she had played already. For one thing, it was agreed that they might have a little underrated the size and the weight of the fish that had to be landed.

Miss Dobbs was a trifle uncertain as to what her next move should be. There was much at stake, and one blunder in tactics might be fatal. However, she was about to receive assistance of a kind she had felt it would no longer be wise to expect.

"Miss Dobbs … Cora," said the young man, with an abruptness that startled her. "There's something … something particular I want to say to you."

Cora was on guard at once. But she was able to make clear that whatever he might have to say to her, she was prepared to listen.

"I've been thinking a goodish bit," said Henry Harper, with a quaint stiffening of manner as the gruff words found a way out of him, "about that talk we had the last time I come here."

Miss Dobbs listened with eyes half shut. Her face was a mask.

"I don't pretend to know much about what's due to ladies," he said, after a pause so long and so trying that it seemed to hypnotize him. "I've not mixed much in Society" – W. M. Thackeray, in whose works he was now taking so much interest, had a great belief in Society – "but I should like to do what's straight."

Silence still seemed the part of wisdom for Miss Dobbs.

"If I've done wrong, I'm sorry." There was another very awkward pause to navigate. "But I didn't see no harm in what I've done, and that's the truth."

A very slight sniff from Miss Dobbs … a very slight sniff and nothing more.

"If I never speak again, Miss Cora, it's a solemn fact."

The sniff grew slightly more pronounced.

"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 assistance 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 circumstances." 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 bumps!" 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 embarrassment. 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.