had many a time paid before, of being made of sensitive stuff. It
was as if an occasion had insidiously arisen for a sacrifice--a
sacrifice for the sake of a fine superstition, something like honour
or kindness or justice, something indeed perhaps even finer still--a
difficult deciphering of duty, an impossible tantalising wisdom.
Standing there before his ambiguous treasure and losing himself for
the moment in the sense of a dawning complication, he was startled by
a light, quick tap at the door of his sitting-room. Instinctively,
before answering, he listened an instant--he was in the attitude of a
miser surprised while counting his hoard. Then he answered "One
moment, please!" and slipped the little heap of packets into the
biggest of the drawers of the davenport, which happened to be open.
The aperture of the false back was still gaping, and he had not time
to work back the spring. He hastily laid a big book over the place
and then went and opened his door.

It offered him a sight none the less agreeable for being unexpected--
the graceful and agitated figure of Mrs. Ryves. Her agitation was so
visible that he thought at first that something dreadful had happened
to her child--that she had rushed up to ask for help, to beg him to
go for the doctor. Then he perceived that it was probably connected
with the desperate verses he had transmitted to her a quarter of an
hour before; for she had his open manuscript in one hand and was
nervously pulling it about with the other. She looked frightened and
pretty, and if, in invading the privacy of a fellow-lodger, she had
been guilty of a departure from rigid custom, she was at least
conscious of the enormity of the step and incapable of treating it
with levity. The levity was for Peter Baron, who endeavoured,
however, to clothe his familiarity with respect, pushing forward the
seat of honour and repeating that he rejoiced in such a visit. The