you with others. Now I have paid you; remember, I do not seek to
purchase your silence. I leave it entirely to your own option whether
you tell your story or not. I know that you cannot brand yourself with
deeper disgrace and shame than by making public your share in this
transaction."

Allan Lyster murmured some insolent words which his lordship did not
choose to hear. He straightened the lash of his whip.

"Now," he continued, blandly, "I am going to give you a lesson. I am
going to teach you several things. The first is to respect the trusts
that parents and governesses place in you when they confide young girls
to you for lessons; the second, is to respect women, and not, like a
vile, mean coward, to trade upon their secrets; and the third lesson I
wish to give you is to make you an honest man, to teach you to live on
your own earnings, and not on the price of a woman's tears. This is how
I would enforce my lesson."

He raised that strong right arm of his and rained down heavy blows on
the cowardly traitor who had taken a woman's money as the price of his
honor and manhood. His face never for one moment lost its calm; but the
strong arm did its work, until the coward whined for pity. Then Lord
Atherton broke his whip in two and flung it on the floor.

"I should not like to touch even a dog with it," he said, "after it has
touched you."

He stood still for some moments to see if the coward would make any
effort to rise and revenge himself; but the man who had been content to
live on a woman's misery thought the safest plan was to lie still on the