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 prosperity, and threw him over the moment his little money peccadillos came to light."

"That's bad," said Ernest; "but I dare say they were dead tired of each other. It is so difficult to go on liking the same person for ever and ever; and besides, as Reginald was ruined, they could not have lived on air."

"No, but she had had a large fortune left her, and jilted him just when she might have helped him; and that is what people call a saint. And there is that unfortunate Stuart getting into no end of scrapes, for he has become reckless, and will be thoroughly dished."

Mary could stay no longer. As quietly as she could, she glided to the gallery door, and, certain that she could not be recognised, allowed herself the natural solace of letting it fall with a slight tendency to a bang, and rushed along the passage to her own room. The sound of the closing door made the two gentlemen start. "Who's there?" said Lord Beaufort in a very guilty voice. "Is there anybody just come into that gallery?" he added, as the silence continued.

"Nobody just come in, but somebody just gone out," said Ernest, drily. "If it were Miss Forrester, you are about as much dished as Stuart. My chief merit happily is that I am a good listener"; and he sauntered on to the anteroom.

Lord Beaufort rushed up the steps, still with a vague hope of finding a deaf librarian, or a dusting housemaid; but no, there was nothing but a handkerchief, and on one of its corners an intricate arrangement of forget-me-nots and roses represented to an acute decipherer the word "Mary." Lord Beaufort laid it down again as if it were made of glass, walked down the steps as if he were treading on ice, and, following Ernest, whispered to him, "We never must open our lips again in that confounded room."

Mary, on her part, was promising to herself never again