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Rh out everything. I used to say that was why the finger ends were always out of her gloves. I would have to equivocate, and perhaps to lie, when asked point-blank questions which if answered would betray the truth. I would be putting my dear step-mother to the same inconvenience and humiliation."

"Trust her wit and knowledge of the world to evade Mrs. Cribbage."

"But I cannot. I have not the wit."

Mr. Welsh was vexed, he stamped impatiently.

"I can't follow you in this," he said.

"Well, Mr. Welsh, then perhaps you may in what I give you as my next reason. I feel bound morally to take the consequences of my act. When a wretched girl flings herself over London Bridge, perhaps she feels a spasm of regret for the life she is throwing away, as the water closes over her, but she drowns, all the same."

"Not at all, when there are boats put forth to the rescue, and hands extended to haul her in."

"To rescue her for what?—To be brought before a magistrate, and to have her miserable story published in the daily penny papers. Why, Mr. Welsh, her friends regret that her body was not rolled down into the deep sea, or smothered under a bed of Thames mud; that were better than the publication of her infamy."

"What will you have?"

"I have made the plunge; I must go down."

"Not if I can pull you out."

"You cannot pull me out. I made my leap out of my social order. What I have done has been to commit social suicide. There is no recovery for me save at a cost which I refuse to pay. I have heard that those who have been half drowned suffer infinite agonies on the return of vitality. I shrink from these pains. I know what it would be were I fished up and thrown on my own shore again. I would