often are. Moreover, how many women in my place, confronted by that
divine creature, wooed by that wondrous personality, intoxicated by that
smile and that voice, allured by the appeal of those marvellous hands,
would have found the strength to resist? I did not resist, I yielded; I
accepted. I was already in disgrace with Aunt Constance--as well be
drowned in twelve feet of water as in six!

So we drove rapidly away in the brougham, through the miry,
light-reflecting streets of Hanbridge in the direction of Knype. And the
raindrops ran down the windows of the brougham, and in the cushioned
interior we could see each other darkly. He did his best to be at ease,
and he almost succeeded. My feeling towards him, as regards the external
management, the social guidance, of the affair, was as though we were at
sea in a dangerous storm, and he was on the bridge and I was a mere
passenger, and could take no responsibility. Who knew through what
difficult channels we might not have to steer, and from what lee-shores
we might not have to beat away? I saw that he perceived this. When I
offered him some awkward compliment about his good English, he seized the
chance of a narrative, and told me about his parentage: how his mother
was Scotch, and his father Danish, and how, after his father's death, his
mother had married Emilio Diaz, a Spanish teacher of music in Edinburgh,
and how he had taken, by force of early habit, the name of his
stepfather. The whole world was familiar with these facts, and I was
familiar with them; but their recital served our turn in the brougham,
and, of course, Diaz could add touches which had escaped the
_Staffordshire Recorder_, and perhaps all other papers. He was explaining
to me that his secretary was his stepfather's son by another wife, when
we arrived at the Five Towns Hotel, opposite Knype Railway Station. I
might have foreseen that that would be our destination. I hooded myself
as well as I could, and followed him quickly to the first-floor. I sank