let him go--was there?--for the affair had got into the papers.
And perhaps the kindest thing would have been to forget him.
Anyway the easiest. Forgiveness would have been more difficult, I
fancy, for a young lady of spirit and position drawn into an ugly
affair like that. Any ordinary young lady, I mean. Well, the
fellow asked nothing better than to be forgotten, only he didn't
find it easy to do so himself, because he would write home now and
then. Not to any of his friends though. He had no near relations.
The professor had been his guardian. No, the poor devil wrote now
and then to an old retired butler of his late father, somewhere in
the country, forbidding him at the same time to let any one know of
his whereabouts. So that worthy old ass would go up and dodge
about the Moorsom's town house, perhaps waylay Miss Moorsom's maid,
and then would write to 'Master Arthur' that the young lady looked
well and happy, or some such cheerful intelligence. I dare say he
wanted to be forgotten, but I shouldn't think he was much cheered
by the news. What would you say?"

Renouard, his legs stretched out and his chin on his breast, said
nothing. A sensation which was not curiosity, but rather a vague
nervous anxiety, distinctly unpleasant, like a mysterious symptom
of some malady, prevented him from getting up and going away.

"Mixed feelings," the Editor opined. "Many fellows out here
receive news from home with mixed feelings. But what will his
feelings be when he hears what I am going to tell you now? For we
know he has not heard yet. Six months ago a city clerk, just a
common drudge of finance, gets himself convicted of a common
embezzlement or something of that kind. Then seeing he's in for a
long sentence he thinks of making his conscience comfortable, and