Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/188



, December 16.

Dear Montie,

I can't let you alone, you see. I must unburden myself, or something will happen—something apoplectic. If I have sinned, I am punished; and so far as I can see the worst still stretches before me in a long vista. It was good of you to scrawl off that second letter, at midnight, as an afterthought. It was forwarded, and has just reached me here, by grand good luck.

You say I would do better to make a clean breast of it; but that's easier said than done. You're not here, and you can't see the "lie of the land" as I can. I'll explain the position to you, from my point of view, for I think you don't quite understand it.

Not to mince matters, I am a Fraud, and Miss Randolph is the sort of girl to resent being imposed upon, If this Payne, who rejoices in the name of Jimmy, should find out the truth about me and tell her to-morrow, she would be exceedingly angry, as she would have a right to be, and would, I think, find it hard to forgive me. It is because I have felt this instinctively that I have let things slide. I have drifted down the stream of enjoyment, saying to the passing hour, like Goethe's hero, "Stay, thou art 172