indulgent tone.

"A great deal more than you will tell me," answered Doreen, promptly.

Whereat there was another pause. Dudley took up one of the brown-paper
parcels and turned it over in his hands. Perhaps it was to hide the fact
that an irrepressible tremor was running through his limbs.

If he had looked at her at that moment he would have seen in her eyes a
touching look of sympathy and distress. The girl knew that something had
been amiss with him--that something was amiss still. She cared for him.
She wanted his confidence, or at least so much of it as would allow her
to pour out upon him the tender sympathy with which her innocent heart
was overflowing. And he would have none of it. He wanted to treat her
like a beautiful doll, to be left in its cotton wool when his spirits
were too low for playthings, and to be taken out and admired when things
went better with him.

This was what Doreen mutinously thought and what her lips were on the
point of uttering, when the door was opened by Mr. Wedmore, who came
into the room with a copy of the _Evening Standard_ in his hand.

"Look here, Horne, did you see this?" said he, as he folded the paper
and handed it to Dudley. "Here's an odd thing. Of course it may be only
a coincidence. But doesn't it seem to refer to the rascal who ruined
your prospects--Edward Jacobs?"

"A middle-aged Jewish woman, who found some difficulty in making
herself understood, from an impediment in her speech, applied to
Mr. ----, of ---- Street Police Court, for advice in the following