"I cannot. Go on with everything just the same. Tell my mother I have
gone abroad for six months, and if you value my name, keep my secret
from spreading, if you can."

And then a rough voice called John Smith to the prison van.




CHAPTER III.

The Papers Again.


Mr. Foster went home in a terrible rage. His clerks could not imagine
what had happened. He looked pale, worried, anxious and miserable. "I
should not think," he said to himself, "that such a thing ever happened
in the world before." His clients thought him bad tempered; he had the
air of a man with whom everything had gone wrong--out of sorts with all
the world.

"The man is mad," he said to himself, with a shrug of his shoulders;
"neither more nor less than mad to fling away his life and disgrace his
name. It is useless to think it will never be known; those stupid papers
are sure to get hold of it, and then there is little chance of secrecy."

He went about his work with a very unsettled, wretched expression on his
shrewd face. Something or other had evidently disturbed him very much.
While on his part John Smith, with the same light in his face and the